The Victorian (Australia) government is enforcing strict quarantining rules to reduce the number of COVID-19 cases. The short-term strategy detailed in the daily press release, published on YouTube, is to attempt to reduce daily cases to zero, as quickly as possible.
Stage 4 restrictions are currently enforced, limiting most normal social interaction.
From the Victorian Government website:
From 6pm on Sunday 2 August, if you live in metropolitan Melbourne, Stage 4 restrictions apply.
A curfew is in place between the hours of 8pm until 5am. This means you must be at your home during these hours. The only reasons to leave home between 8pm and 5am will be work, medical care and caregiving.
The four reasons that you can leave home remain, but further limitations are now in place for: shopping for food or other essential items exercise (applies to outdoor exercise, and with only one other person) permitted work
Caregiving, for compassionate reasons or to seek medical treatment also remains a permitted reason to leave home.
However, I cannot find any official release that details a long-term strategy to reopen internationally, once the daily cases reach a tolerable level and the stage 4 restrictions are lifted.
This bothers me, because my feeling is that to maintain a daily COVID-19 case rate of zero (or close to it), international borders cannot be reopened... possibly ever? Other countries, such as the USA have far less strict social distancing protocols which are not compatible with Victoria's social distancing rules.
This leads me to my question:
What is the Victorian government's long-term COVID-19 strategy for eventually reopening borders?
