Ⅱ. Cloze
        It took two cases of covid-19 to plunge Perth, the capital of Western Australia, into lockdown onApril 24th. The state government announced a three-day “circuit-breaker” just as locals were gearing upfor a long weekend. “We can’t take any chance,” declared the premier, Mark McGowan.
        Australian states keep ordering snap lockdowns because they are nervous about more  ___16___  strains of covid-19. Some of the world’s strictest border controls have generally held the virus at bay.Most foreigners are barred from entering the country, and returning citizens must quarantine for twoweeks in guarded hotels. When a case of the virus  ___17___ , state premiers throw up defenses.
        A single infected quarantine guard closed Perth for five days in February. The state of Victoria,home to 6.7m Australians, went into a short lockdown after a cluster of 13 cases leaked from a hotel inMelbourne. Brisbane, capital of Queensland, has been shut down twice since January. And that is justthis year.
        The latest breach in Perth started with a man who fell ill after his isolation had ended. He caught thevirus in quarantine, from an infected traveler in another room,  ___18___ fears about airbornetransmission within hotels. State leaders are hollering for an even tougher system. Most quarantinehotels are in big cities, so one idea is to send travelers to better-  ___19___ sites in quieter spots. MrMcGowan wants the federal government to use air bases or a detention center on Christmas Island, anAustralian territory in the Indian Ocean. Queensland hopes to build a quarantine facility in the small cityof Toowoomba. Victoria  ___20___ a “village-style environment” outside Melbourne.
        Another suggestion is to clamp down even harder on travel. Border controls ban residents fromleaving  ___21___ outsiders from coming in. Aussies can escape only for a handful of reasons, such as afamily funeral. Mr McGowan, however, thinks they are swanning off too easily. “If people want to gooverseas to covid-infected countries in the middle of a pandemic, then why should they come home andrisk the rest of us?” he asks.
        The federal government,  ___22___ , is asking for a sense of proportion. The quarantine hotels are “99.99% effective,” says the prime minister, Scott Morrison. Half a million people have passed throughthem, notes the health minister, Gret Hunt. He calls it “one of, if not the, most successful systems in theworld.”
        But voters back to fiercest isolationists. Mr McGowan declared Western Australia “an island withinan island” when the pandemic started, and cut it off from the rest of the continent for most of last year.He is so popular that his opponent  ___23___ a recent state election weeks before the first vote was cast.Annastacia Palaszczuk, a strict guardian of Queensland’s borders, won a third term in October.
       So when will Australia reopen to the rest of the world? The federal government has planned to  ___24___ the adult population of 20m by October, but the roll-out is months behind schedule. Even wheneveryone is fully  ___25___ , officials say that travelers may still need some form of quarantine. A poll inFebruary found that 71% of Aussies want to keep the international border closed until the “public healthcrisis has passed.” On that basis, they will be cut off for some time.
【題組】16.
(A) slinky
(B) contagious
(C) feeble
(D) ponderous