SYDNEY (AUSTRALIA) – As Australia’s strictest lockdowns began on Thursday, from outdoor gatherings, weddings, funerals to takeaway food, everything came to a standstill as authorities try to stifle the latest flare-up of the novel coronavirus.
The state, home to about 1.8 million people, has recorded 23 cases from the latest cluster.
The state’s chief public health officer, Nicola Spurrier, told a news conference that no new infections have been reported on Thursday, while 3,200 close contacts of the infected were in quarantine.
Authorities have imposed the six-day lockdown to deal with a highly contagious outbreak of the coronavirus linked to a traveller who returned from Britain, as described by the state premier.
“We’ve had to take this extreme action, this important intervention, to put a circuit breaker in place to deal with this disease,” Premier Steven Marshall told national broadcast ABC.
“We have a particularly difficult strain of the disease, which is showing no symptoms for people who become infected,” he added.
When asked if the duration would be enough, Marshall said: “I’m advised that that will be the time required to knock out those transmission chains for this particular strain.”
Professor Nigel McMillan, director in infectious diseases and immunology at Menzies Health Institute Queensland, Griffith University, said, “Moreover, the circulating UK strains aren’t different from what is circulating in other areas, suggesting it is unlikely there is a ‘UK super strain’.”
“Of course, a novel strain might have arisen very recently so we await the evidence.”