New coronavirus business restrictions mostly apply to metropolitan Melbourne

EVERY Victorian abbatoir will be forced to scale back production by one third as part of major new state government coronavirus restrictions that mostly apply to metropolitan Melbourne.

Regional Victoria will return to Stage 3 restrictions as of Thursday this week, with several categories of businesses to close or operating only on a take-away model, but has largely escaped the significant further changes announced today by Premier Daniel Andrews to how businesses will operate in Melbourne.

Under those changes, Melbourne businesses have been split into three categories:

• Those that will remain open and not be affected, such as supermarkets, groceries, bottle shops, pharmacies, petrol stations, banks, newsagents, post offices, and everyone involved in frontline response
• Those that will close close for six weeks from midnight Wednesday this week, including all retail, some manufacturing and some administration, and
• Those that will remain open but scale back and operate at significantly reduced capacity from midnight Friday, such as meatworks (which will operate at no more than two-thirds production) and construction (where commercial buildings must reduce their workforce to a maximum of 25 per cent and domestic building sites must have no more than five workers on site at any one time).

Mr Andrews said businesses in regional Victoria that were forced to close as part of the Stage 3 restrictions would be eligible for a $5,000 grant from the state government, as they were during the first lockdown, “and we will do our best, our very best to get those paid as quickly as we can”.

He said the decisions announced today were “heartbreaking” but “there is simply no choice”.

“The advice from the medical experts is that this is the only way to get these numbers under control, to drive them down low enough so that we can open up again.

“The alternative is a six-month strategy, not a six-week strategy, and then even at that point, significant doubt that that would work.

“We cannot continue to have 400-500 cases a day and so many people in hospital, so many people dying.

“We have got to drive these numbers down, and if we continue to have the sort of movement that across the community, across the economy, as is part of Stage 3, if we don’t move to further restrictions I have announced today, then we won’t drive those numbers down.”

For the latest updates, head to dhhs.vic.gov.au/coronavirus.