As it happened: Victoria enters 5-day snap lockdown from Friday night as Holiday Inn COVID-19 cluster grows

Caltex Woolworths: Hoppers Crossing - 6.40am - 7.15am

Stowe Australia: South Melbourne - 10.30am - 10.45am

Tuesday, February 9:

901 bus route - (Melb Airport to Broadmeadows Station) – 1:02pm – 1:49pm

Craigieburn Line train (Broadmeadows Station to Glenroy Station) – 1.25pm – 1.59pm

513 bus route - (Glenroy Station towards Eltham) – 1.35pm – 2.17pm

The late night tweet didn’t indicate whether the exposure sites relate to a new or existing case.

However, it said anyone who visited these locations must isolate, test and remain isolated for 14 days.

The department has published a full list of exposure sites and locations where you can get a COVID-19 test.

The Melbourne Airport dates mentioned in the NSW Health text are not listed as exposure sites, according to the Department of Health.

Victorian advice currently lists Melbourne Airport’s Terminal 4 as an exposure site on February 9 from 4.45am to 2pm where a cafe worker had a shift. Brunetti cafe, where the worker was employed, is an exposure site from 4.45am to 1.15pm.

A NSW Health spokesman would not comment further, saying the case is in Victoria.

The nearest that I’ve come to being badly caught out was a trip before Christmas weaving in and of NSW and Victoria between Mildura and Albury-Wodonga when on my arrive in the latter regional city the border suddenly snapped shut.

Now I’m writing from seat 23D on QF466 as our packed plane awaits the arrival of over-stretched NSW police and health officials.

By early Friday morning the latest COVID-19 writing was only the wall or least on the newspaper front pages.

At the Melbourne Qantas terminal there was a wholly unexpected sight: a nearly full Qantas terminal. A flustered airline employee was walking along the security queue that was threatening to spill out onto the footpath.

She explained that airport staff hadn’t expected to have to contend with an additional 4000 people today. One Sydneysider joked that or felt a little like the American evacuation of their Saigon embassy during the Vietnam War.

Fortunately there were seemingly space for the fleeing 4000 who were able to fill empty seats on existing flights. For state premiers snap lockdowns have become the new black and in Melbourne, still living with memories of the world’s longest lockdown, with the latest edict met darkly as diners in a fashionable new restaurant huddled around smartphones watching Dan Andrews’ press conference live.

Now five days of isolation awaits me in Sydney. Such is the life of the innocent traveller, seeking no more a thrill than a visit to the nation’s second-largest city, in 2021.”

The gap between scientific probability and certainty has never been wider for China’s coronavirus diplomacy.

As the investigators were preparing to announce their findings in Wuhan on Tuesday night, Chinese President Xi Jinping was on a virtual meeting with a group of central and eastern European leaders.

The group of 18 was divided. Serbia, Hungary and Montenegro were among six countries who have enthusiastically taken up China’s offer of vaccines to inoculate their populations against a disease that has killed more than 2 million people. But Estonia, Slovenia and Lithuania were among six others who are increasingly wary of Beijing’s vaccines, its promises of economic cooperation and its role in the coronavirus pandemic.

Xi urged the group to put their differences aside. “In the face of such unprecedented challenges, countries must come together and respond with solidarity and coordination like never before,” he said. “These efforts will contribute to a global community of health for all.”

Then, as before, the Chinese leader was careful not to publicly discuss the origins of the virus, opting for a message of unity against a common enemy in an attempt to rise above tumultuous multinational sparring over the past year.

Read the full article here.

But Mr Albanese wants Canberra to take on a much larger role in quarantining returned travellers, and has said facilities such as the Howard Springs centre in the Northern Territory should be established nationally.

“Quarantine is a federal responsibility and has been since 1901,” Mr Albanese said on Friday.

Howard Springs is outside Darwin and is a former labour camp co-funded by the Commonwealth and the Northern Territory to provide up to 850 quarantine places a fortnight.

Mr Albanese has said Mr Morrison had “a deliberate position of handing off responsibility to the states so that he can then blame the states for any issues that arise”, and pointed out that the Australian constitution “makes it very clear our national government is in charge of quarantine”.

Read the full story here.