Covid-19: Melbourne fades away after three months, Australia remains cautious
Melbourne residents are once again roaming the streets of metropolitan Victoria after three months of lockdown on October 28, 2020. REUTERS / Sandra Sanders
Text by: RFI Follow
3 min
Melbourne emerged from three months of confinement on Wednesday October 28, including two months with a curfew.
The five million inhabitants of Australia's second city, the epicenter of the second wave of the coronavirus in the country, now have greater freedom of movement.
But the country prefers to remain isolated and keep its borders closed until further notice.
Publicity
Read more
With our correspondent in Sydney,
Grégory Plesse
From midnight, restaurants, bars but also shops
have finally reopened their doors
in Melbourne, and some residents got up very early this Wednesday morning to make sure they could have a coffee on the terrace.
Emily, who
can once again leave her house as often as she wants
, already has a lot of plans.
“
My agenda is already full!
I have to have a drink with friends, my family comes to visit us
, she explains by phone.
I have manicure and pedicure sessions, then we are also going to go shopping with my daughters
!
"
A "
resurrection
" after a "
sacrifice
"
The schedule is much less busy for Thomas, but it is nonetheless attractive.
“
I'm going to go to downtown Melbourne, and I just want to go and see this, this atmosphere, this resurrection,
” explains the Frenchman who left Marseille two years ago to settle in Melbourne.
This
very long confinement
which has just ended marked him morally, but he nevertheless sees it as
a necessary evil
: "
Yes, it is difficult, but it is a sacrifice of several weeks which makes it possible to find a normal life and to control this disease
.
"
With the epidemic in Melbourne now under control, Australia seems to be out of the woods for now.
But the government remains cautious despite everything:
the
international
borders
, which have been closed since March, could remain so until the end of next year.
► To read also
: Coronavirus in Australia: the reconfinement of Melbourne will be expensive
Newsletter
Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
google-play-badge_FR
Australia
Coronavirus
Confinement
Health and medicine
On the same subject
Covid-19: in Italy, demonstrations against the new restrictive measures
Covid-19: soon overwhelmed, Portugal is punctually reconfiguring itself for All Saints' Day
Covid-19: France is preparing for "difficult decisions", speech by Macron on Wednesday