Australian Open: COVID outbreak forces Grand Slam to ban fans from the audience

After opening the 2021 Australian Open in relative normalcy, the first Grand Slam of the year has been hit with another major blow. Spectators will once again be banned from watching the event live, after the Australian state of Victoria has declared an emergency lockdown.

An outbreak of the UK strain of the novel coronavirus has been detected in the community and has resulted in a third hard lockdown. The said outbreak reportedly began from a quarantine hotel. A total of 13 cases have already been detected in connection to a single worker from the hotel who became infected.

The lockdown will be effective starting 11:59 pm on Friday, February 12, and will end on Wednesday, February 17. However, this may change depending on the results of further tests that are being done. Surprisingly, spectators are still allowed to enter and watch the matches on Friday, and will only be refunded for tickets meant for Saturday onwards.

The Australian Open will continue to be played as scheduled, but instead of the bustling crowd that had started to build up from a quiet first day, the stands will be left empty again after today.

Fans and players alike were able to enjoy a week of the tournament in what was a refreshing atmosphere that finally allowed a maximum of 30,000 people in the venue. However, they will now have to return to the grim scenario that was seen in most of the events that were able to be staged in 2020.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews is known to have a swift and decisive hand when it comes to lockdowns and coronavirus control measures. He said that he wanted to move quickly to nip the current spread in the bud. "This is the fastest-moving, most infectious strain of coronavirus that we have seen," he said, as quoted by the BBC.

At the moment, close to 1,000 people have already been traced to be close contacts of those infected. Further contact tracing and testing is vigorously being conducted.

Victoria had previously been able to control the spread of the virus, having been able to log numerous virus-free weeks at the end of 2020 and earlier this year. The current cluster has broken their latest 28-day streak.