Melbourne (AFP)

More than five million people in Melbourne, Australia's second largest city, have been ordered to confine themselves as of midnight Thursday following the outbreak of a Covid-19 outbreak.

This seven-day confinement concerns the city of Melbourne as well as the state of Victoria which surrounds it, declared the acting Prime Minister of this state, James Merlino, while the number of cases related to this cluster has doubled, passing to 26.

"We are dealing with a highly infectious strain of the virus, a disturbing variant, which is spreading faster than anything we have ever recorded," Merlino said.

This variant B.1.617, detected in India for the first time, shows increased transmissibility.

It would have spread via a traveler returning from abroad.

Schools, bars and restaurants will close, all gatherings will be banned while the wearing of masks will be mandatory again.

New Zealand has already suspended flights without quarantine from Victoria on Tuesday and major air links with other Australian states were cut.

This containment measure, intended to have a "circuit breaker" effect, should allow health authorities to trace contact cases as effectively as possible.

For a week, residents will only be allowed to leave their homes for urgent needs, including getting vaccinated.

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Mr. Merlino accused the conservative federal government of being partly behind this lockdown due to the slow pace of the coronavirus vaccination campaign.

"If more people were vaccinated, the circumstances would be very different from those we know today. But unfortunately, this is not the case," he said.

This is the fourth containment of Australia's second largest city since the start of the pandemic.

Thousands of Melbourne residents had already been ordered to self-quarantine after cases recorded in dozens of places, including a stadium and nightclubs.

- "No system is infallible" -

In recent months, Australians have experienced few restrictions as the huge island continent has been successful in curbing the pandemic.

Voices were raised, however, to denounce the slowness of the vaccination campaign.

Only 3.7 million doses have been administered to a population of 25 million.

The Labor opposition criticizes the government for not reviewing the quarantine system for travelers arriving from abroad, which has shown failures.

"If we had had an alternative to hotel quarantine (...), we wouldn't be where we are today," said Merlino.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has brushed aside these criticisms, saying "no system is foolproof" and Australia's fight against the coronavirus has so far proved particularly effective.

"We will do all we can to protect the lives and livelihoods of Australians, we have already lost 910 people to Covid in this pandemic. Of course, this figure is far from what some countries have experienced" , did he declare.

Mr Morrison urged eligible Australians to get vaccinated, saying the "wonderful and enviable" lifestyle of Australians during most of the pandemic has made some hesitant to get vaccinated.

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Health Minister Greg Hunt said the first doses of the vaccine were being delivered to the remaining nursing homes in Victoria state, where hundreds of people died when the virus got there. spread last year.

In Melbourne, tens of thousands of people lined up to be tested for Covid-19 and others rushed to get vaccinated as the state opened vaccination centers for the elderly for the first time from 40 to 49 years old.

Australia has totaled less than 30,000 cases of Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic - most in the state of Victoria during the second wave last year - with less than a thousand deaths in the country.

© 2021 AFP