Sydney opens to jabbed patrons
Print Edition
Sydney’s cafes, gyms and restaurants welcomed back fully vaccinated customers yesterday after nearly four months of lockdown, as Australia aims to begin living with the coronavirus and gradually reopen with high rates of inoculation.
Some pubs in Sydney, Australia’s largest city, opened at 12:01am and friends and families huddled together for a midnight beer, television footage and social media images showed.
“I see it as a day of freedom, it’s a freedom day,” New South Wales state Premier Dominic Perrottet told reporters. “We are leading the nation out of this pandemic but this will be a challenge.”
Perrottet warned that infections would rise after reopening, and virus-free states such as Western Australia and Queensland are watching what living with COVID-19 is going to look like amid concerns health systems could be overwhelmed.
While NSW’s dual-dose vaccination rate in people above 16 hit 74 percent, in neighboring Queensland, whose borders remain closed to Sydney-siders, the rate is only 52 percent and the state government is following an elimination strategy with lockdowns to control any outbreak.
Perrottet has declared an end to lockdowns in NSW and has strong support for reopening in Sydney, whose more than 5 million residents endured severe restrictions from mid-June following an outbreak of the highly infectious Delta variant. The outbreak has since spread to Melbourne and Canberra.
New South Wales yesterday reported 496 new locally acquired cases, well down from their peak last month, while Victoria logged 1,612 new infections, the lowest in five days.
Under the relaxed rules for NSW, retail stores and restaurants reopened with reduced capacity, and more vaccinated people were allowed to gather in homes and attend weddings and funerals.
The state aims to hit an 80 percent vaccine rate around late October, when more curbs will be relaxed. But the unvaccinated remain at home until December 1.
Steven Speed, the publican at Sydney’s oldest pub, Fortune of War, said he hoped it was the last lockdown after 18 months of restrictions. “Just the costs of closing down and opening up, closing down and opening up — they’re huge,” said Speed, whose most loyal customers returned from 9am yesterday for the first post-lockdown beers with friends.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison urged Sydney residents to “enjoy the moment.”
“Today is a day so many have been looking forward to — a day when things we take for granted, we will celebrate,” he said.
Morrison, who must call an election before next May, has come under pressure to press all states to reopen borders to bolster the economy and allow families separated by state border closures to reunite by Christmas.
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