Coronavirus: Australia halves the number of nationals allowed to return

Australia will reduce by half the number of its nationals authorized to return from abroad in the country, at the time when Melbourne knows a resurgence of the cases of new coronavirus, announced, this Friday July 10, the authorities.

Read also: Coronavirus: Melbourne, the second city of Australia, again confined

As of Monday, July 13, only 4,000 nationals or permanent residents of Australia will be allowed to return to the country every day, against about 8,000 currently, announced Prime Minister Scott Morrison. He justified this measure by the need to concentrate the means to fight against the " very worrying " outbreak of the virus in Melbourne. Authorities have identified 288 new cases in the past 24 hours, the highest number since the outbreak of the epidemic in mid-June in Melbourne.

However, the authorities put these figures into perspective, saying that they are due to a record number of people screened. " We are conducting a massive screening campaign, " said Daniel Andrews, Prime Minister of the State of Victoria, where Melbourne is located. More than 30,000 people have been tested in the past 24 hours, he said. The five million inhabitants of Melbourne, the second largest city in Australia, have been confined since Thursday for six weeks.

Worsening situation in Melbourne, improvement in the rest of the country

The state of Victoria closed all of its borders on Wednesday to save the rest of Australia, which has so far managed to contain the Covid-19 epidemic. Health officials have recommended that people in the Melbourne area wear masks if they cannot maintain the necessary distance.

At the end of March, Australia closed its international borders except for its nationals and permanent residents returning to the country. All returning travelers are placed in quarantine in hotels. Morrison said the limitation on the number of citizens allowed to return would remain in effect until the epidemic was contained in Melbourne. Violations of the sanitary measures implemented in the hotels of Melbourne where the people in quarantine are placed would be at the origin of the new outbreak of the epidemic.

Travelers from abroad represented the majority of the cases recorded on the immense island continent. While the situation has worsened in Melbourne, it is improving in the rest of the country. On Friday, for the first time in more than three months, the northeast state of Queensland reopened its internal borders to people from all states except Victoria. Australia, with a population of 25 million, has recorded just under 9,000 cases of coronavirus and 106 deaths.