MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 05th August, 2021) The Victoria state, which includes Australia's second most populous city of Melbourne, imposed a week-long lockdown on Thursday after logging six new locally acquired COVID-19 cases.
"Due to the COVID-19 cases reported in the last 24 hours - suspected to be the highly infectious Delta variant - Victoria will enter a state-wide lock-down for seven days from 8:00 pm tonight, Thursday 5 August," the Victoria premier's office said in a press release.
Residents are only allowed to leave their houses in order to buy food, to exercise for two hours, for care or caregiving reasons, to get vaccinated, and for professional or educational reasons if one cannot do it remotely.
"No Victorian wants to be in this position. We know that the Delta variant moves faster than anything our public health experts have seen before - and we know what we need to do to drive it down once again," Premier Daniel Andrews said, as quoted in the press release.
New South Wales and Queensland, meanwhile, also remain under the lockdown. Earlier on Thursday, the country reported 302 new COVID-19 cases. With a population of 25 million, Australia has administered 13 million vaccine doses.
