Melbourne emerged from 112 days of lockdown on October 27, which at the time made it the longest continuous lockdown in the world. New Stage 4 restrictions included mandatory masks outdoors and an evening curfew. On August 2, Mr Andrews declared a state of emergency. Photo: Gettyīy July 8, the whole of Melbourne entered a lockdown that would last for almost four months. The snap lockdown of nine public housing towers in Melbourne foreshadowed a statewide lockdown. Disaster in VictoriaĪll states began easing their restrictions in May.Īt this point, many thought the country would recover from the pandemic much quicker than expected.īut then a new cluster in Melbourne saw Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews impose local lockdowns across 10 postcodes on June 30.ĭays later, the state government sent police to lock down nine public housing towers, a move that the Victorian Ombudsman ultimately said breached the human rights of the 3000 affected residents. ![]() The Service NSW and Service Victoria apps have already integrated digital vaccination certificates, with other states expected to follow shortly.Īs Sydney and Melbourne reopen, these apps are becoming essential to live with COVID. Meanwhile, state governments worked on their own check-in apps that eventually became ubiquitous and helped with contact tracing during later outbreaks. “Based on the evidence at hand, that’s cost the taxpayer $537,325 for each of the 17 unique cases it has detected,” opposition government services spokesperson Bill Shorten said more than a year later. Health authorities have used COVIDSafe to identify 81 close contacts so far, but only 17 of those hadn’t already been found via traditional contact tracing. When the app launched, it had limited functionality on iPhones and was plagued by privacy concerns. On April 26, 2020, the COVIDSafe app was released at a cost of almost $2 million to build. Harvey Norman later repaid $6.01 million of the $20.5 million it received from the government. It also rolled out JobKeeper for businesses to keep employees on the books, but the scheme was later slammed after companies such as Harvey Norman claimed millions of dollars despite going on to post record profits. To combat this, the federal government introduced the Coronavirus Supplement to support newly unemployed people, as well as people already receiving government payments. Two months after the nationwide lockdown began, 870,000 Australians had lost their jobs.īy July, unemployment reached a 20-year-high of 7.4 per cent.Īustralia ultimately recorded its first recession in 29 years – and the biggest one since 1959 – which demonstrated the magnitude of the upheaval. Closed borders and hotel quarantine became a key feature of Australia’s lockdowns. Photo: GettyĪt noon the following day, restaurants, cafes, pubs, non-essential retail, gyms, cinemas and places of worship all shut their doors to the public.Īustralia also closed its borders to foreigners and introduced mandatory hotel quarantine.Ī lack of flights meant thousands of Australians would remain stranded overseas for the next year. “So the premiers and chief ministers, together with myself, have tonight agreed that there is a need to move to more widespread restrictions on these gatherings in indoor spaces.” Councils closed beaches around Australia in early 2020. “We now need to take action, because we can’t have the confidence as a group of leaders that the social distancing guidelines and rules that we’ve put in place won’t be followed to the level of compliance we require to flatten the curve, slow the spread, and save lives,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison said at an evening press conference. On January 25, 2020, the first four people in Australia tested positive to COVID-19.īy March 1, a 78-year-old Perth man became the first person to die after contracting COVID-19 on the Diamond Princess cruise ship.įast forward to March 22, and the newly formed national cabinet announced Australia would enter lockdown “for at least six months”. ![]() Lockdowns changed the face of Australia overnight. The past 19 months of on-and-off restrictions have forever changed modern Australia. ![]() The restrictions our governments put in place sheltered Australia from much of the devastation seen across the rest of the world.īut they also ushered in heavy policing, separated families, wrecked businesses, and kept us from doing the things that we love.
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