Victoria is back in lockdown with an uncertain outlook and a swelling list of possible COVID-19 infection sites extending to supermarkets, shopping centres and major sporting events.
The scrap over COVID-19 support payments has been resolved, in a boost to some Victorian workers, but the bigger battle to track and control a rampant Delta strain "moving more quickly than we have ever seen in Victoria" is just beginning.
There are already echoes of the May lockdown: the same restrictions, initial cases arriving from interstate, exposure sites listed at the MCG and Highpoint Shopping Centre, and a sense of uncertainty over how long confinement will last.
READ MORE: Victoria plunges into five-day lockdown - what you need to know
The coronavirus has spread remarkably quickly from two Sydney removalists to residents of the Ariele apartment building in Maribyrnong and then onto their neighbours, friends, family, friends of friends and beyond. Eighteen cases so far.
It has now sent the whole state back into lockdown — its fifth — for at least five days, after infecting people from the rarefied air of the MCG Members' Reserve out to now-closed schools in Kew, Barwon Heads and Bacchus Marsh.
This time around, AAMI Park, the Uni Hill DFO and a host of other major centres have also been affected.
"This is probably the fastest response we have ever seen to an outbreak that's moving more quickly than we have ever seen in Victoria, or I suspect anywhere else in Australia," coronavirus response commander Jeroen Weimar said on Thursday.
READ MORE: Positive case at Wallabies Test, MCG exposure advice upgraded
Mr Weimar said "initial signs are encouraging" and Premier Daniel Andrews said the outbreak was less complex than Victoria's most recent COVID-19 challenge.
But he still couldn't guarantee five days would be enough to bring it under control.
"You only get one chance to go hard and go fast," he said.
"If you wait, if you hesitate, if you doubt, then you will always be looking back wishing you had done more earlier.
"I am not prepared to avoid a five-day lockdown now only to find ourselves in a five-week or a five-month lockdown."
Victoria is now bracing for the hit to the wider economy and individual hip pockets that comes with a five-day lockdown, in the hopes that a sudden shutdown will prevent something much longer.
Workers who lose eight hours or more will be eligible for support payments, after some wrangling between the premier and Prime Minister Scott Morrison, and Mr Andrews is set to announce more support for businesses today.
Travel is also off the cards, for now at least, with Western Australia, South Australia and New Zealand all temporarily slamming their borders shut to the state.
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