MELBOURNE (AUSTRALIA) – For the last four days of the Australian Open tournament, fans will be able to watch the game from the stands after the state of Victoria announced that a snap lockdown would be lifted on Wednesday midnight.
Victoria State Premier Dan Andrews said spectators allowed to watch the semi-finals and finals of the Grand Slam at Melbourne Park might be reduced from the originally agreed 25,000 a day.
“There will be meeting early this afternoon … where we go through and work through exactly what is a safe number and that decision will be made as soon as possible,” Andrews told media persons.
“They were already reduced, they may have to be reduced a little bit further, but that matter will be resolved in the next few hours.”
Organisers said they expected crowds would be back on Thursday and would make a full statement later on Wednesday after the details were worked out.
Fans were barred from the precincts of Melbourne Park from last Saturday after a small outbreak of the pandemic variant associated with the UK was detected. There were no locally acquired coronavirus cases on Wednesday.
Organiser will be desperate to have fans in the stands after spending a large sum of money to get the tourney up and running, including some A$40 million ($31 million) on putting players through 14 days of quarantine.
Ahead of the official announcement, tickets were already available for purchase online on Wednesday morning and some seats for Sunday’s men’s final at Rod Laver Arena are still available at A$550 each.
“I assume people have bought those tickets, they assume there would be some risk involved in that given that I have only made these announcements now,” Andrews added.
“We’re going to finish up with crowds in lots of different places. We’re going to finish up with people being able to move freely because this short and sharp circuit-breaker lockdown has worked.”