Australia restricts returning citizens amid COVID

SYDNEY (Reuters) — Australia will halve the number of citizens allowed to return home from overseas each week, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said yesterday, as authorities struggle to contain a COVID-19 outbreak in the country’s second most populous city.

The state of Victoria reported 288 new cases yesterday, a record daily increase for any part of the country and sparking fears of a wave of community transmission in a country where most cases have involved returned travelers.

“The news from Victoria remains very concerning,” Morrison told reporters in Canberra.

Since March, Australia has allowed only citizens and permanent residents to enter the country with some 357,000 having returned to date.

Australia will now impose a cap of 4,175 people allowed to return each week and those returning will also have to pay for a mandatory 14-day quarantine in a hotel, which until now had been paid for by state governments.

“The decision that we took... was to ensure that we could put our focus on the resources needed to do the testing and tracing and not have to have resources diverted to other tasks,” Morrison said.

Neighboring New Zealand also introduced measures this week to limit the number of citizens returning home, seeking to reduce the burden on its overflowing quarantine facilities.

The announcement of the new restrictions comes days after Victoria reimposed a lockdown in Melbourne for six weeks following a surge in cases linked to social distancing breaches in hotels where returned travelers were held in quarantine.

In addition to forcing five million people to stay home for all but essential business, the flare-up has led the rest of the country’s states to ban Victorians from entering and dealt a blow to hopes for a speedy recovery for the nation’s economy.