As a testament to how quickly things can change with the coronavirus pandemic around the world, just as England’s pools announced their reopening dates, Swimming Victoria is announced re-closures.
Due to a resurgence of coronavirus within the state of Victoria, Australia, the state’s Premier Daniel Andrews has instituted ‘stage three’ in 10 postcode areas in and around the capital city of Melbourne as of Wednesday, July 1st through Wednesday, July 29th. The reinstituting of restrictions comes after the state saw 191 new infections on Tuesday, July 7th, its highest daily number since the pandemic began.
The lockdown, which comes with ‘checkpoints anytime and anywhere’ according to BBC, impacts almost 5 million citizens. Borders between Victoria and neighboring states are closed.
As it pertains to swimming, residents of these areas are prohibited from attending any Swimming Victoria affiliated training, programs, meetings or events, including all club activities.
Swimming Victoria denotes that, while exercise is allowed as part of the restrictions in these areas, organized club training does not fall within the guidelines of approved exercise.
Swimming Victoria CEO Jason Hellwig says of the lockdown in the video above, “Disappointing news but it’s something that we’ll all deal with. No one is on their own. The fastest way we can get back to doing what we love is for everyone to do the right thing and follow the guidelines. I think swimming has been a fantastic example of that.”
The organization says it will be revisiting its competition plan for the 2020/21 season in light of this new situation.
Meanwhile in Florida cough cough
The race for stupidest state went to Victoria. No other challengers & no state wants to be on the podium with them . They have been banned from the rest of the country . South Australia wants to bring in the army to stop them fleeing over the border. I’m sorry for the rural Victorians who are sensible normal ppl but outvoted by Woke Melbournians.
About a year ago this Victorian Woke Govt decided to tackle drownings . They prepared a plan to overhaul the teaching methodoly & recommended schools & public programs drop freestyle as the initial & premier stroke & teach , yes , Breastroke! Apparently free was too forbidding for certain cultures so make everyone suffer . There is a place in survival & rescue but you actually have to be a strong swimmer first.
What?
I’m an Aussie and I don’t understand this lingo??
But hey I’m a proud South Aussie through and through.
Sir…. this is a Wendy’s
NSW could yet join them because that idiot Gladys took SO DAMN LONG to close the border and really QLD should probably have delayed reopening their border (I live 1km from the border on the NSW side).
Borders & Exclusion not open borders & Inclusion is the future .
You need to woke up before I push the caps lock key.
We (all 8 billion of us) need to just lock the whole world down for a month. We keep doing these half efforts back and forth we’re never going to go anywhere.
I appreciate where you’re coming from with that idea, and in theory that would be the most effective course of action. Lockdown and quarantine is fine and all for those of us in the middle class of major countries – but it could be catastrophic for those who work in essential infrastructure across the globe (especially food, water, and power) as well as those who don’t have the money/resources to stop working for a month. You’re right that we could do better, but we’ll never get that much better than these half efforts in this consumer-based, very globally interconnected society. That’s my two cents.
Too bad.