Everything About Melbourne’s New ‘Lockdown’ Whereby People Are Restricted to 5km of Their Home

Remember back in the days when there was a fake news about Singapore wanting to impose location-based lockdown, whereby you’re restricted to a “zone” you stay in? People in Yishun were like

Well, that was fake news, but over in Melbourne, Australia, this is going to happen. Kind of.

Australia, the Country That Successfully Kept COVID-19 Under Control for…2 Months

If you look at the daily cases in Australia, you’d see that the country is experiencing a second wave since July:

Most of the cases are from Victoria, with it housing over 64% of the total cases. Back in March 2020, the state had declared a state of emergency with a “lockdown” and just like any other countries, the state extended the lockdown until 31 May 2020 (kind of lah, because there is never a real “lifting of restrictions”).

And if you look at the chart, it makes sense: the country’s daily new cases have remained consistently low, and everyone’s happy, so restrictions were slowly lifted.

Crap, that sounds like Singapore—

Reader Bao: Please touch wood before you continue

We all know the coronavirus isn’t going to give up that easily, because in the later part of June, more cases emerged in Victoria and the Victorian Government announced the re-tightening of restrictions.

That, unfortunately, didn’t help as more cases emerged, and even more restrictions were imposed (again). By 22 July 2020, masks became compulsory for anyone in public in Melbourne.

But why Melbourne, you ask.

Melbourne is a city in Victoria, and most cases are from the city. Out of the 11,557 cases in the state, 10,643 are from Melbourne, which works out to a whopping 92% of cases in the state.

But still, that didn’t help.

Melbourne’s Latest Lockdown: People Can’t Move 5km Out of Where They Stay

The city with a population of 5 million people will now be under curfew starting from today (2 August 2020).

Victoria has just declared a state of emergency (yes, again), but everyone’s eyes are on Melbourne because the country’s second-largest city will now move into Stage 4 restrictions.

And if you think Circuit Breaker is bad, just look at what Stage 4 restrictions entail.

Firstly, people cannot leave their home between 8pm to 5am. They also cannot leave beyond 5km of where they live, and so if they want to buy essential items, they’d have to make do with the “NTUC FairPrice” near their house instead of those bespoke “Mustafa products”.

Only one person per household is allowed to leave the house once a day to shop for groceries.

In addition, people are only restricted to one hour of exercise a day.

Schools will close and dine-in, which has already been banned, will remain banned.

This will go on for six weeks, but then again…

The reason for the sudden and decisive curfew?

The state reported 397 cases yesterday, and 650 cases today. The three-digit daily cases have started to haunt the state since early July, and unless drastic measures are taken, we could be seeing a four-digit daily cases in the state.

The federal government (in other countries, states are managed by elected state leaders known as governors while the federal government just manage national issues) has expressed support for the decision made by the state government even when they’re of different parties.

If anything, this is once again a lesson to us Singaporeans to always stay disciplined, because things can go out of control so fastly, we might all be staying home in a few days’ notice.

FYI, if you’ve downloaded our app, you’d know that this has happened in South Korea, Hong Kong, Vietnam and many other places.

You can help out by downloading the TraceTogether app. If you’re still worried about privacy, then watch this video (and also subscribe to our YouTube channel, please?):