Venue and festival restrictions in Victoria will be removed entirely from tomorrow, in line with 90 per cent of the state’s population becoming fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
The milestone was announced this morning in a press conference from Premier Daniel Andrews. As part of the forthcoming phase of the state’s roadmap, capacity restrictions and density quotients will be removed for entertainment venues and music festivals, provided all patrons and workers are fully vaccinated.
“You will be able to go back to normal,” Andrews said this morning. “You will have the normalcy you have missed.”
Indoor venues will also need to get a one-off approval of their COVIDSafe Plan from the Victorian Government, while organisers responsible for outdoor events with 30,000 people or more will need to publish their COVIDSafe Plan.
The threshold was first expected to be reached on or around November 24, but is now expected to be at some point over the weekend.
In addition to live music restrictions lifting, caps on home and outdoor gatherings, and indoor density quotients for businesses will be removed. Masks will not need to be worn at all, except in high-risk or low-vaccinated areas such as retail, public transport and hospital facilities. Andrews expects mask-wearing in retail environments to be in place until December 15.
These freedoms will only be made available to fully vaccinated residents and workers, in what Andrews labelled the “vaccinated economy” back in October.
“We’ve made the vaccinated economy not only broader, but we’ve also indicated – we’ve been very clear about the fact – that it’s not changing any time soon, and it’s going to be here for 2022,” he said last month.
Victoria recorded 1,007 new COVID-19 cases and 12 deaths in the past 24 hours.
Earlier this week, the Andrews Government announced an interruption insurance scheme for music festivals, insuring up to $230million for “events cancelled because of public health measures, or because of reduced capacity due to restrictions”