JAKARTA - Sydney cafes, gyms and restaurants are starting to welcome back customers who have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 starting this Monday, after nearly four months of lockdown, as Australia aims to prepare to live with the coronavirus by gradually reopening. with high vaccination rates.
Pubs in Sydney, Australia's largest city, opened at 12:01 a.m. local time, with friends and family gathering for midnight beers, television footage and social media images showed.
"I see it as a day of freedom, it's a day of freedom," New South Wales (NSW) Prime Minister Dominic Perrottet told reporters in Sydney, the state capital.
"We are leading the nation out of this pandemic, but it will be a challenge."
Perrottet warned that infection cases would rise once reopening, and virus-free states such as Western Australia and Queensland were watching what life with COVID-19 would be like amid fears health systems could be overwhelmed.
While New South Wales' double-dose vaccination rate in people over 16 stands at 74 percent, neighboring Queensland, whose borders remain closed to Sydneysiders, is only 52 percent and the state government is following an elimination strategy of rapid lockdown to contain any outbreaks. . .
Perrottet has announced the end of the lockdown in New South Wales and has strong support for reopening in Sydney, whose more than 5 million residents have been subjected to strict restrictions from mid-June following an outbreak of the highly contagious Delta variant.
The outbreak has spread to Melbourne and Canberra, forcing lockdowns in those cities, even as the number of cases dwindles in NSW.
New South Wales on Monday reported 496 new locally acquired cases, well down from its peak last month, while Victoria recorded 1,612 new infections, its lowest in five days.
Under relaxed rules for New South Wales, retail shops and restaurants are reopening at reduced capacity, and more vaccinated people are allowed to gather at home, attend weddings and funerals.
New South Wales aims to reach its COVID-19 vaccination rate of up to 80 percent around the end of October, when more restrictions will be relaxed. But those who were not vaccinated should remain at home until December 1.
Steven Speed, a tax collector at Sydney's oldest pub, Fortune of War, told Reuters he hoped it was the final lockdown after 18 months of restrictions.
"Just the cost of closing and opening, closing and opening, it's huge," said Speed, whose most loyal customer returned from 9:00 on Monday for the first post-lockdown beer with friends.
Meanwhile, Kyl Raggio, owner of the KR Performance gym in the Sydney suburb of Randwick, said Australia could no longer rely on a rolling lockdown to fight the virus.
"I hope we can deal with whatever is happening now moving forward, looking around the world hopefully we can stay open and do our thing," said Raggio, who welcomed his client back to his training facility Monday morning.
Separately, Prime Minister Scott Morrison urges Sydneysiders to 'enjoy the moment'
"Today is a day that many people have been waiting for, a day when things that we take for granted, we will celebrate," he said.
PM Morrison has come under pressure to ask all states to reopen borders, to boost the economy and allow families separated by state border closures to reunite for Christmas. Some states with few cases have not said when they will reopen their borders.
With the rollout of a COVID-19 vaccine gaining momentum, Australia is planning a return to normalcy, allowing fully vaccinated residents to enter and leave the country freely from November, although New South Wales plans to move that date forward.
For information, citing Worldometers Australia to date recorded a total of 129,567 cases of COVID-19 infection, with 1,448 deaths and 96,234 patients recovered since the pandemic.
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