Melbourne reimposes lockdown on 36 suburbs to stop spike in coronavirus cases

Authorities on Tuesday ordered the lockdown of 36 suburbs in Melbourne in an attempt to stop a spike in coronavirus cases. The move is seen as a departure from the relaxation of restrictions elsewhere in Australia.

From midnight on Wednesday the first suburb-specific stay-at-home order will be imposed on some 320,000 people in the country’s second biggest city, the Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews announced. Residents in the suburbs must stay home unless traveling for work, school, healthcare, exercise or food for a period of four weeks. The Victorian state government requested all flights be diverted to other states.

The return to lockdown is a setback for the home state of nearly a quarter of Australia’s 25 million people, seen to have taken one of the toughest enforcement approaches when the country first went into lockdown in March, Reuters said.

South Australia, one of several states in the country to close domestic borders, canceled its scheduled reopening to other parts of the nation on Tuesday, citing a spike in coronavirus infections in neighboring Victoria.