Melbourne Learns to Go Hard and Early With Lockdowns

Melbourne, the city that’s been subject to some of the world’s most arduous restrictive measures since the pandemic began, announced on Wednesday it will extend its fourth lockdown for at least seven days. Authorities are struggling to contain a cluster that’s grown to 60 and is more infectious than seen in its previous outbreaks. During its longest lockdown last year, Melbourne recorded a peak of around 700 daily new cases of Covid-19, and it has registered by far the nation’s most amount of deaths from the virus. The so-called circuit-breaker lockdowns implemented in February and again last week were ordered after fewer cases were recorded than those those in 2020, leading to some optimism that the current measures may be able to be removed after 14 days.