More than five million people in Australia's second-biggest city of Melbourne have been ordered into a snap week-long lockdown, as officials blamed a sluggish vaccine roll-out and hotel quarantine failures for another virus outbreak.
Stay-at-home orders will apply to Melbourne and surrounding Victoria state from midnight for seven days, acting state Premier James Merlino told residents, as the cluster doubled to 26 cases. "In the last day, we've seen more evidence we're dealing with a highly infectious strain of the virus, a variant of concern, which is running faster than we have ever recorded," Mr Merlino said.