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Victoria records no new COVID-19 cases raising hopes for eased restrictions
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Victoria has recorded no new local cases of coronavirus for the sixth day in a row and no new cases in hotel quarantine.
There are now 16 active cases in the state, four fewer than Wednesday. The results come from 18,282 tests processed in the past day.
Queensland achieved 48 days straight without a case of community transmission on Wednesday, while New South Wales has reached its 38th day without a local case – a record for the state.
Friday marks the end of the 14-day isolation period for close contacts in the Holiday Inn outbreak that sparked Melbourne’s five-day hard lockdown.
With an extended run of no new locally acquired cases outside the Holiday Inn cluster, Premier Daniel Andrews said earlier this week that the state was “well-placed” to ease restrictions on Friday.
Under current restrictions, Victorians are allowed a maximum of five visitors to their homes and public gatherings are limited to 20 people outdoors.
The cap on people returning to work – currently set at 50 per cent – may move to 75 per cent in the public and private sector if restrictions are eased.
On a positive note, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is reopening at the Princess Theatre after COVID-19 shut down the show for 11 months.
Audience numbers will be capped at 50 per cent on Thursday and Friday due to restrictions from the snap lockdown. If restrictions ease as expected on Friday, the cap will lift to 85 per cent from Saturday.
Victoria has tightened restrictions on travellers from Auckland after more cases emerged in the New Zealand city this week.
The Department of Health issued a statement late on Wednesday night saying all flights arriving from Auckland into Victoria would be regarded as “red zone” arrivals from 11.59pm on Wednesday.
The updated advice comes after three more cases emerged in Auckland on Tuesday, believed to be linked to an outbreak on February 14 that plunged the city into a snap three-day lockdown.
The statement said anyone arriving into the state from the New Zealand city would have to enter mandatory hotel quarantine for 14 days.
Any traveller from Auckland who arrived in Melbourne from Tuesday has been urged to get a COVID-19 test immediately and quarantine until they received a negative result.
Meanwhile, the training and credentials of all Victorian doctors and nurses involved in Australia’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout are being urgently reviewed after two aged care residents in Queensland accidentally received overdoses of the vaccine.
Vaccinations in aged care homes are behind schedule just days into the federal government’s rollout as an untrained doctor was revealed to have delivered the wrong dose to patients in Brisbane’s north.
NSW appears to be leading the charge in vaccinating front-line workers. More than 3200 quarantine hotel staff and healthcare workers have received the first doses of the Pfizer vaccine in NSW, compared with 1200 in Victoria and about 530 in Queensland.
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