Disappearing Goal Posts A Worry For Covid 'Normal'
Key guidelines and goalposts that showed the conditions required to enter Covid Normal have been removed from the Government’s website.
Up until Tuesday, the DHHS guidelines stated that the COVID Normal threshold was 28 days of no new cases, no active cases statewide and no other outbreaks of concern interstate.
Liberal Member for Western Victoria, Bev McArthur, has advised the Victorian Parliament that goalposts have disappeared.
“That threshold has now magically gone – along with all the clarity and assurance to my electorate that our lives will be able to return to normal in the near future,” she said.
“The people of Western Victoria are sick and tired of being dictated to by bureaucrats in Melbourne on how to run their businesses and live their lives.
“With the removal of this threshold, many will be rightly concerned about a possible intention to keep them locked up in perpetuity”.
Mrs McArthur has asked the Premier when Victoria will move to Covid Normal, given there are no publicly available measures in place.
“Given that the caveats have now disappeared, can the Premier provide us with the new thresholds as opposed to the vague terms like ‘medical advice’?”
The concern is heightened given the Government has already shown a propensity to adopt slowest-possible easing of restrictions.
The Premier has ditched the trigger point for moving from the current Step 3 to the Last Step.
The trigger point for the Last Step is 14 days of zero new cases. Currently on 13 days, it means if there are no new cases today – the state could move onto the Last Step tomorrow, Friday.
However, despite that, the Premier is ignoring the trigger point and is enacting their slower goal of 22nd November.
Even the Government’s own website https://www.coronavirus.vic.gov.au/last-step-coronavirus-roadmap-for-reopening still pursues the 14-day trigger point.
“This is not a good sign for the move to Covid Normal.
“All Victoria needs to be ‘unlocked’ so that life and enterprise can get back to normal, not just COVID Normal”.
13 November 2020