We’ll find out today if tough restrictions are to be reintroduced to stop the spread of COVID in Greater Melbourne after an outbreak grew to 15 cases yesterday. Acting Premier James Merlino yesterday said “I cannot rule out taking some further action” depending on where things land today. Six new cases were reported yesterday – all linked and accounted for, Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton said. But with more than 60 exposure sites, contact tracers have their work cut out for them, putting Melburnians on edge that a 4th lockdown (or a ‘locky d’ as the cool kids call it…) is coming.

THAT DOESN’T SOUND GOOD…
Well, let’s see what they say today before getting our disaster pants on. Not waiting to see what happens is the AFL… Saturday’s Gold Coast v Hawthorn game scheduled to be played in Darwin will likely find another venue. And they have put Victorian-based players and staff into a lockdown of sorts asking them to limit their movements until more is known. With play set to resume tomorrow night, details about how that will be managed are eagerly awaited by footy clubs and fans. Also not waiting is South Oz with last night’s reinstatement of a border ban for residents of Greater Melbourne. If there’s some good news, the episode seems to have given Victorians a push to get vaccinated.

WHEN IS THIS GOING TO BE OVER?
Dunno, but that could be a question being posed by UK PM Boris Johnson. Overnight, his former chief adviser Dominic Cummings told a parliamentary committee that “tens of thousands of people died, who didn’t need to die” because Johnson is unfit for the top job. Cummings said one of the PM’s ideas in the early stages of last year was to have an injection of the virus on live telly… But back at the starting line asking how this all started is Australia, the US, UK and others… The World Health Organization’s big annual meeting has convened, and calls for a more in-depth investigation into the COVID-19 pandemic’s origins rang loud and clear after an international mission to China earlier this year failed to yield a definitive answer.