Did we really "start closing our borders" that early?
I know we'd restricted direct flights from China or the Wuhan area earlier, but citizens and permanent residents (and their families) could still arrive. We were still allowing international visitors in mid March - they only cancelled the F1 GP in March 12th, the day it was supposed to star, when all the international drivers/teams/fans/media-circus were already in Melbourne.
That's fair - I meant that we'd started closing our border to China. Apparently Australia blocked tourists from China from February 1 and required other travellers from China to go into quarantine.
I'm still trying to find when the UK implemented the same restrictions on China that Australia did. Apologies for a Daily Mail link, but it suggests that a week later the UK was still struggling to implement restrictions on travel from China due to EU rules [1] (but then, the Daily Mail would say that). Deutsche Welle suggests that a Europe-wide ban didn't happen until 17th March, and even then the Schengen still remained open [2].
As for the F1 GP, I'll just paraphrase our WA Premier: "They do things differently on the east coast" ;)
I know we'd restricted direct flights from China or the Wuhan area earlier, but citizens and permanent residents (and their families) could still arrive. We were still allowing international visitors in mid March - they only cancelled the F1 GP in March 12th, the day it was supposed to star, when all the international drivers/teams/fans/media-circus were already in Melbourne.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/mar/13/formula-one-au...