The folks on the other side of the planet in Australia (and previously New Zealand) are officially returning to their dancefloors.
Just last night there was an announcement via 9News Sydney that a series of new re-openings have been implemented. In addition to green lighting dancefloors, Australia has also announced there are no caps to weddings or funerals, and venues are allowed to double their current (previously reduced) capacities.
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It took a lot for Australia to get to this point, including quarantining measures that many were thought to be too restrictive. For the state of Victoria, for example, we’re talking about a 15-week lockdown where business closed, mobility limited, and strict, 8:00pm curfews enforced. These measures were lifted just a month ago, and during that time, Australia went from having around 500 new cases per day to almost zero. The only other countries to have recovered from such numbers are China and Taiwan, who also enforced serious lockdowns.
The United States is still yet to enforce any restrictions of that magnitude. Just today we’ve recorded 184,000 new cases of coronavirus. Perhaps we, along with the rest of the countries seriously struggling with recovering from the virus, could learn something from the course of action Australia has taken.