“Any restrictions on the travel of Victorians have to be proportionate with human rights, including freedom of movement, and the government needs to explain why home quarantine is not an option for Victorians in the red zone who wish to return home,” Ms Kretzenbacher said.
Victoria s Chief Health Officer, Brett Sutton, said on Monday that there was no “rigid criteria” of what would trigger a region from changing to a red zone and the border closing, although 14 days without community transmission in red zones was among the factors that would be considered.
Professor Sutton said mystery cases, exposure sites and case numbers would also feed into the decision-making: All of those elements . are reviewed continuously.”
Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg were publicly campaigning for one. Restaurant and cafe owners were desperate, as were people who’d been cut off from friends and family for two months.
Thompson was a member of a Melbourne University research team, led by epidemiologist Tony Blakely, asked to provide scientific modelling to help inform the government’s exit strategy. The modelling didn’t tell the government what it should do but provided a series of projections about the risk of a further epidemic before Christmas.
The most important variable in the modelling – essentially a political one – was how far the government was willing to push case numbers down before it allowed things to reopen. Although Andrews didn’t say it out loud at his press conference, it was clear to Thompson as he drove from his Castlemaine home to Bendigo that the government had decided to go all-in; it planned to eliminate the virus.