World Worst-Hit Australian State Marks 28 Days of No New Virus Cases

(Bloomberg) -- The state at the center of Australia’s worst coronavirus outbreak has gone 28 days with no new cases of the virus, an enviable record as the U.S. and many European countries grapple with surging infections or renewed lockdowns.

© Bloomberg People take photographs at the Princes Bridge in Melbourne, Australia, on Wednesday, Nov 25, 2020. Australian employers unexpectedly added tens of thousands of jobs in October as Victoria’s tough Covid restrictions began to lift and the state’s workers returned to the labor force, while a recovery in the rest of the economy gathered pace.

One of the world’s strictest and longest stay-at-home orders enabled Victoria to crush community transmission after a daily peak of about 700 cases in early August. The success means Australia will be among a handful of western nations that can look forward to Christmas with limited restrictions on family gatherings and what authorities are calling a Covid-normal summer.

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Competition killings and "blood lust" were a "norm" among Australian special forces in Afghanistan, according to an official inquiry into alleged war crimes attributed to Canberra's elite troops.Competition killings and "blood lust" were a "norm" among Australian special forces in Afghanistan, according to an official inquiry into alleged war crimes attributed to Canberra's elite troops.

In Australia , the news is much better. The state of Victoria again recorded no new cases and no 462 more people have died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 in the U.K, raising the NSW has now gone a week without a locally transmitted virus case but health authorities are still

Five million residents in Australia 's second biggest city emerged from an almost two-month overnight curfew on Monday as just five new coronavirus cases were recorded in worst - hit Victoria state . The figure was the lowest daily rise in infections in Victoria since June 12 and came as residents of the

City Locked Down for Three Months Has Bleak Lesson for World

The 28-day run is “an extraordinary achievement psychologically as well as practically, in terms of opening up the economy,” said Sanjaya Senanayake, an infectious diseases physician and associate professor of medicine at the Australian National University in Canberra. But there’s no room for complacency, he warned, and Australia faces on an ongoing risk of the virus entering the community from returned overseas travelers -- despite a mandatory system of hotel quarantine.

“The reality is, no matter how careful people are, there can always be that accidental breach or a breach where you can’t even identify the source,” Senanayake said.

Mystery Cases Trigger Overhaul of Australian State Quarantine

More than 30,000 Australians, many living in Europe and the U.S. where the virus is rampant, are waiting to return home.

Bungled security at quarantine hotels in Victoria, which reportedly included guards sleeping with guests, saw the virus escape into the community -- leading to the three-month lockdown in Melbourne. Meanwhile, in neighboring South Australia, authorities are investigating how two security guards, a cleaner and two returned travelers contracted the virus while in hotel quarantine -- seeding a cluster of infections in the state that’s grown to at least 31.

While 28 days with no mystery cases of Covid-19 is the working definition for eliminating community transmission, the Victoria government remains wary.

“This is a wildly infectious virus, you’ve always got to assume there’s more out there than you know,” Premier Daniel Andrews said earlier this week.

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