Coronavirus-forced restrictions in Melbourne could be tightened from next week as authorities try to stem the spread of COVID-19, report Australian media.

It comes as Australia’s COVID-19 death toll rose to 201, with Victoria state leaders considering New Zealand-style lockdowns to get community transmission under control. Victoria on Saturday reported the deaths of a man and two women aged in their 80s and 90s, and 397 new cases.

The Sunday Age reported the city may be placed under a six-week period of more stringent constraints, including the almost complete shutdown of Melbourne’s public transport network, starting from Wednesday.

The Sunday Herald Sun reports Victoria state Premier Daniel Andrews will announce the new measures over the next two days.

They also include limiting the distance residents could travel from their homes and the closure of more businesses selling non-essential goods.

The state’s chief health officer, Brett Sutton, said stricter lockdowns like those enforced in New Zealand were being considered. Under the New Zealand model, all businesses would shut down except for essential services.

On Sunday, New South Wales confirmed its first coronavirus-related death in more than a month as authorities sought to suppress a number of growing clusters at a hotel and several restaurants in Sydney.

Traditional crowds at dawn services for the Anzac Day memorial holiday in Australia were replaced with candlelit vigils in driveways and neighbors gathering to listen to buglers play "The Last Post."

Restrictions on crowds and social distancing due to the coronavirus meant that the usual packed dawn services in cities and towns across the country were not held. The holiday, also celebrated in New Zealand, marks the anniversary of New Zealand and Australian soldiers, known as Anzacs, landing on the Gallipoli Peninsula in 1915.

More than 10,000 soldiers from the two countries were killed during that World War I campaign in what's now Turkey, although Anzac Day honors those killed in all wars.

In the national capital Canberra, Prime Minister Scott Morrison spoke at a crowd-free commemorative service held inside the Australian War Memorial. A didgeridoo sounded the beginning of the service.

In the Sydney suburb of Wahroonga, trumpeter Lewis Ketteridge, 8, and French horn player Grace Colville, 16, were among a dozen brass players playing "The Last Post" from their driveways at dawn before 40 residents observed a minute's silence.

"Strangely, it made it more moving that people were still willing to commemorate Anzac Day instead of just letting it go by," said resident Catherine Colville.

She said the community carefully maintained social distancing as they placed candles, pictures of serving ancestors and wreaths of native leaves and flowers under an Australian flag hanging on a tree.

Marches and gatherings were canceled for only the third time — the last time in 1942 and previously during the devastating Spanish flu outbreak of 1918.

In New Zealand, where even tighter crowd restrictions are in place, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern stood at dawn on the driveway of Premier House, the leader's official residence, for a ceremony.

Thousands around New Zealand participated in the "Stand at Dawn" initiative, and in one Christchurch suburb, bagpiper Tom Glove greeted the families that gathered at each driveway with a rendition of "Amazing Grace."

Cardinal George Pell has linked his fight against corruption in the Vatican with his prosecution in Australia for alleged child sex abuse.

Pell was regarded as the third highest-ranking Vatican official in 2018 when he became the world's most senior Catholic to be convicted of child sex abuse. He served 13 months in prison before Australia's High Court last week acquitted him of molesting two choirboys in St. Patrick's Cathedral in Melbourne while he was archbishop of Australia's second-largest city in the 1990s.

Pope Francis' former finance minister said in a television interview broadcast on Tuesday that some church officials believed he was prosecuted by Australian authorities because of the trouble he had caused in the Vatican in implementing financial reforms.

"Most of the senior people in Rome who are in any way sympathetic to financial reforms believe that they are" linked to the prosecution, the 78-year-old cleric told Sky News.

"What was surprising was even my theological opponents in Rome didn't believe the stories" of sexual abuse, he added.

Pell said he did not have evidence of a link. But he suspected that a man who swore he had been sexually abused by Pell as a 13-year-old choirboy more than two decades ago had been "used."

Francis created the Secretariat for the Economy, and named Pell its prefect, as a key part of his financial reform plans after being elected pope in 2013. Pell had tried to wrestle the Holy See's opaque finances into order and align them with international standards, but his efforts and brusque style were rebuffed repeatedly by the Vatican's old guard.

Pell stood aside from the job in 2017 to return to Australia, determined to clear himself of decades-old allegations of child sex abuse.

Francis named a 60-year-old Spanish economist, the Rev. Juan Antonio Guerrero Alves, as Pell's successor last year, a day after Australia's Victoria state Court of Appeal agreed to hear his case to overturn the convictions. The court upheld Pell's convictions in a 2-1 majority decision.

Alves came to his new job in a period of financial crisis, after Vatican prosecutors raided the Secretariat of State and the Holy See's financial watchdog after receiving reports of a suspicious real estate transaction.

Pell said Francis had "absolutely" supported him, even though "My theological views ... don't line up exactly with Pope Francis."

"I think he values my honesty and perhaps that I would say things that some other people mightn't say, and I think he respects me for that," Pell added.

Pell said that neither Francis nor Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin were corrupt, but that he did not know how high Vatican corruption rose.

"Just how high up it goes is an interesting hypothesis," he said.

Pell said he'll return to Rome after the coronavirus pandemic to pack up his apartment, but that he plans to make his home in Sydney, where he had been archbishop.

Victoria police refused to comment on newspaper reports Tuesday that they have begun investigating another child abuse allegation against Pell dating to the 1970s.

Pell said he "wouldn't be entirely surprised" if police continued to pursue him. He has denied any wrongdoing.

Pell said he was "ashamed" of his church over its child abuse crisis.

"There are two levels. One is the crimes themselves and then the treating it so inadequately for so long," Pell said.

He warned in child abuse cases that "guilt by accusation" was "not a sign of a civilization."

"The pendulum 30 or 40 years ago was massively against anybody who said that they'd been attacked," Pell said. "Nowadays we don't want it to swing back so that every accusation is regarded as gospel truth. That would be quite unjust and inappropriate."

Pell's accuser in his trial, a man in his 30s whose identity is concealed by law, said in a statement last week that he hoped Pell's acquittal would not deter child abuse victims from reporting to police.

"I would like to reassure child abuse survivors that most people recognize the truth when they hear it," said the man, described in court as Witness J. "They know the truth when they look it in the face. I am content with that."

The Audubon Nature Institute in New Orleans welcomed a new resident, a baby giraffe named Hope.

Sue Ellen, a middle-aged giraffe at the Freeport-McMoRan Audubon Species Survival Center, gave birth Monday, according to a Friday news release.

Audubon Nature Institute President and CEO Ron Forman said Hope was the perfect name for the calf, especially as New Orleans has been hit hard during the coronavirus pandemic.

"What name could be more fitting than 'Hope" in these challenging times?" Forman said. "Hope is what has sustained our community through seemingly insurmountable crises in the past and what we must hold onto as we continue on in the coming days and weeks. May we all take comfort in the reminder that, even in the darkest of days, life continues, undaunted."

Species Survival Center curator Michelle Hatwood said the staff had known the calf was on the way for 15 months but said it can be tough to pinpoint a likely delivery date for giraffes.

The calf was born 6-feet (1.8-meters) tall, weighing in at 189 pounds (86 kilograms).

Located on 1,200 acres of land west of downtown New Orleans, the center is now home to 13 giraffes, the release said. The new calf was the eighth giraffe born at the center as part of the Alliance for Sustainable Wildlife conservation breeding partnership with San Diego Zoo Global.

The giraffes reside in a 46-acre forested area and spend most of their day foraging and looking for their favorite leaves to eat.

Since the coronavirus pandemic began in Louisiana, the Audubon Nature Institute has been forced to close its facilities to the public. It's asking federal officials for assistance in providing funds to larger nonprofits like zoos and aquariums.

Australia on Wednesday banned non-essential indoor gatherings of more than 100 people including weddings and restaurants as part a range of measures that could be maintained implemented for more than six months to slow the spread of the new coronavirus.

"This is a once in 100-year type event," Prime Minister Scott Morrison told reporters. "We are looking at a situation of at least six months for how we deal with this. It could be much longer than that. It could be shorter. That is unlikely, given the way we are seeing events unfold."

The indoor limit follows an earlier ban on outdoor gatherings exceeding 500.

Weddings and religious services are regarded as non-essential while health and emergency service facilities are exempt.

Disability and aged care centers are open but restricting visitors. Schools will also remain open, although some medical experts argue for their closure.

Australians have been advised not to travel overseas. Work restrictions on 20,000 foreign student nurses in Australia would be lifted so that they can bolster health resources battling the pandemic.

Australia by Wednesday had 454 confirmed infections among a population of 25 million, but the infection rate is gathering pace.

The virus causes only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough, for most people but can be severe in some cases, especially older adults and people with existing health problems. People with mild illness recover in about two weeks, while those with more severe illness may need six weeks to recover.

Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy said most of the cases were Australians returning from overseas and community transmission in Australia remained "low-level at the moment."

The government announced giving its ailing airlines a 715 million Australian dollar ($430 million) lifeline to help the sector through the pandemic.

A range of government charges will be refunded and waived to help airlines under pressure as domestic and global travel plummet.

The move is expected to create an initial benefit of AU$159 million, with the government refunding charges paid since Feb. 1.

The Airlines for Australia and New Zealand group applauded the government package for a "critical pillar" of the Australian economy and the tourism industry.

The package comes a day after Australia's largest airline, Qantas, announced it would slash its international passenger seats by 90% and domestic capacity by 60% through May at least.

Its major rival, Virgin Australia, announced on Wednesday it would ground all its international flights and half its domestic capacity from the end of March until June 14.

Regional airline Regional Express has urged the government to underwrite the addition debt it will need to survive the downturn.