Ballarat will tonight enter a seven day COVID lockdown, as the city records multiple wastewater detections, exposure sites and four positive cases of the virus.
Premier Daniel Andrews said there were a growing number of signals in Ballarat that were of real concern to public health officials.
“Of particular concern are the multiple waste-water detections in the Ballarat area that are not accounted for by the current positive cases. Those detections have been identified across the city,” said the Premier.
“Because of these combined factors, Victoria’s Chief Health Officer has declared that from 11.59pm tonight, the City of Ballarat will have the same restrictions – except for the curfew – in place as Metropolitan, Melbourne. This will last for seven days, until 11.59pm on Wednesday, 22 September.”
For the community in Ballarat, there will be only five reasons to leave home: shopping for necessary goods and services, authorised work and study, caregiving or compassionate reasons, exercise, and getting vaccinated.
Exercise and shopping will be limited to 5km from your home. If there’s no shops in your 5km radius, you can travel to the ones closest to you. Masks will be mandatory indoors and outdoors – and there will still be no visitors allowed to the home.
Exercise will be limited to just you and one other person, plus dependants if they can’t be left at home. Playgrounds will remain open for children under 12 but with only one parent or carer and adults should not remove their masks to eat or drink. Playgrounds must have QR codes.
“We know this will be disappointing for the Ballarat community, but we’d rather get on top of these cases open up again as quickly as possible, than let cases get out of control in the area,” the Premier said.
“It’s so important that people in these LGAs continue to check for exposure sites near them, get tested if they have any symptoms at all and most important – get vaccinated if you haven’t already.”
Meanwhile, he said the Shepparton community had done an incredible job in keeping each other safe.
“Because of this, today the Chief Health Officer has also declared that from 11.59pm tonight, they will have their restriction settings downgraded to match the rest of regional Victoria.”
