SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australian authorities say mandatory hotel quarantine for those arriving at the Australian Open tennis tournament was crucial to stop COVID-19, as the country registered another day without receiving new cases. -local Tuesday.
Some of the world’s top tennis players include world No. 1 Novak Djokovic on a 14-day hotel quarantine quiz, suggesting they should be allowed to complete the process in accommodation with tennis courts ahead of the tournament which begins in the state of Victoria on Feb. 8.
But Victoria chief Daniel Andrews said he would not make changes.
“People are free to ask for things, but the answer is no,” Andrews told reporters at a televised news conference.
“They knew what they were traveling in and we don’t cut corners or make special arrangements. ”
More than 70 players and their entrants are confined to their hotel rooms after passengers on three flights returned a positive test card for the coronavirus. Victoria recorded four new cases in a hotel quarantine Tuesday, but these do not count as community broadcasts.
Andrews came under severe pressure in 2020 after the country’s second most populous state filed for months to lock down a second wave of infections of the new coronavirus.
In the nearby state of New South Wales, Hollywood actor Matt Damon was released from a hotel quarantine after arriving at the “Thor” sequel in Sydney.
Damon boarded a private jet, stays in a rented house under security and pays for hospital-level cleaning for his 14-day quarantine, a doctor involved in his quarantine was called in a media statement local.
As Australia’s hard border controls keep daily numbers of new coronavirus cases at zero or single numbers low, tourism operators have called for extra subsidies after health authorities recommended the country not reopen its borders in 2021.
“There is a bigger question to be made about the strategic viability of the industry,” Tourism and Transport Forum Head Margy Osmond told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
If the industry has not received an extension of federal wage subsidies that are due to end in March, “we will be lucky to have a tourism business within 12 or 18 months,” she said.
Reciting with Byron Kaye; Edited by Lincoln Feast.