Victoria facing prospect of being cut off from rest of Australia indefinitely

Victoria is seriously facing the prospect of being cut off from the rest of Australia indefinitely, an epidemiologist has warned.

Professor Tony Blakely, Professorial Fellow In Epidemiology at Melbourne University, told Tom Elliott that unless a vaccine was developed, the rest of the country would be foolish to re-open the borders.

“Six out of eight states and territories have eliminated community transmission,” he explained.

“There’s no way, if you’re the Premier of WA, you’d let people in from Victoria where there is endemic spread of it.

“Unless we eliminate the virus out of Victoria and we keep having the virus circulating, we’re not going to have the borders open to these other states and territories who will quite rightly want to protect their elimination status.”

And the chances of Victoria eliminating the virus again are dwindling by the day.

“It’s getting harder the longer the numbers stay up,” he said.

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