Melbourne residents flocked to the city’s pubs, restaurants and hair salons in the early hours of Friday after the world’s most locked down city emerged from its latest spate of restrictions designed to combat the spread of Covid-19.

Australia’s second largest city has so far endured 262 days, or nearly nine months, of restrictions during six separate lockdowns since March 2020, representing the longest cumulative lockdown for any city in the world. Argentina’s capital, Buenos Aires, last year went through 234 straight days of lockdown.

In Melbourne, people were seen cheering and clapping from their balconies, while cars honked horns continuously at 11.59pm on Thursday when lockdown restrictions in place since early August ended.

Many venues, including food outlets and even haircutters, opened at the unusual hour for the occasion.

The reopening will be a boost for Australia’s Aus$2 trillion ($1.5 trillion) economy after recent lockdowns pushed it to the brink of a second recession in as many years.

In China, the capital city of Beijing is planning to test tens of thousands of people after four new Covid-19 cases were found in a suburban district on Friday, as a new outbreak prompted school closures and flight cancellations across the country.

China has maintained a staunch zero-Covid strategy with strict border closures, lengthy quarantines and targeted lockdowns. But the world’s most populous nation is now scrambling to tamp down dozens of infections in several provinces.

The latest flare-up has prompted the grounding of hundreds of flights, the closure of scenic areas and schools and a flurry of stay-at-home orders in affected housing compounds.

The outbreak was traced to an elderly couple who were in a group of domestic tourists who flew from Shanghai to Xi’an, Gansu province and to Inner Mongolia. Dozens of cases have since been linked to their trip.

France vaccinates against both flu and Covid-19

Worried that the flu and Covid-19 could trigger a winter-time double-whammy of new infections and deaths, France is forging ahead with a nationwide vaccination and booster-shot programme against both diseases, offering simultaneous jabs to millions of at-risk people.

The annual flu vaccination campaign kicked off on Friday, four days earlier than initially planned, dovetailing with France’s Covid-19 vaccination programme that is providing booster shots to those in need.