Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Cameras have been allowed in a Sydney hospital's Covid-19 intensive care unit, showing the struggle of one patient on a ventilator. The 53-year-old Covid patient from NSW is only able to take shallow breaths of air through the ventilator. His medical teams, dressed in full PPE, adjusts his ventilator tubes and monitor his oxygen levels. The patient has given his consent for his images to be published
Hmmmm, Morrison also seems to be arguing that Australia really isn’t as far behind when it comes to vaccinations as everyone think.
He was asked if the Syndey situation could have been avoided if the vaccine rollout was on track.
But very few countries are talking single digits when we’re talking single digits when we’re talking personals. We’re at 9%.
No, no, we’re above 10%... We’re at about 11%. A third of Australians have already received their first dose.
Well over 70% of over 70s. And well over half of those over 50 and we’re scaling-up now to almost a million doses a week.
Prime minister Scott Morrison has also been out and about this morning, seemingly mostly to slam the Victorian government a little more.
Here is what he had to say on the Today show when asked if the Victorian government’s criticism were fair:
No, it wasn’t because during the Victorian lockdown without request the federal government was providing a billion dollars every week.
In the recent lockdown, which thankfully only went for two weeks, Victoria got exactly the same as what NSW got for those two weeks. NSW is going into week four of a lockdown and that means the challenges are escalating.
A man in his 70s from Sydney’s east has died of coronavirus; Queensland keeps border open for now; support package for NSW to include increased payments for people who have lost work. Follow the latest updates live
It’s a little late today, but pleased to keep up Matilda Boseley’s tradition of highlighting the bizarre graphic design choices of the Queensland premier’s social media team.
Today’s special announces 100 new Tafe scholarships. Someone has spent time etching the bloke’s arm in front of the graphic, for some reason.
100 TAFE scholarships valued at up to $5,000 are up for grabs.
The skills TAFE offers can change lives and set people up for stable and rewarding careers. pic.twitter.com/9TOHAsIbuz
Looks like we’re learning about that Covid relief package at 3.30pm.
Just enough time to take a breath, grab a coffee, watch a couple of episodes of he Office and settle in for the announcement.
An international consortium wants to build what would be the world’s biggest renewable energy hub in Australia’s south-west to convert wind and solar power into green fuels like hydrogen.
The group of energy companies announced the proposal over a 15,000 sq km area that could have a 50 gigawatt capacity and cost $100bn.
Residents in Bondi Junction under police guard after eight cases in block, while residents in Maribyrnong building ordered to isolate after an infected removalist worked there
Concerns about the spread of the Delta variant in apartment buildings has prompted a hard lockdown of two residential complexes in Sydney and Melbourne.
An apartment building in Bondi Junction in Sydney’s east remains under police guard after eight cases of Covid-19 were detected across five of the 29 apartments, while residents of an apartment building in Maribyrnong in Melbourne’s north-western suburbs, have been ordered to isolate after a removalist with Covid worked there last week.
A new Australian government Covid awareness advertisement featuring a young woman gasping for air in a hospital bed has been criticised for leaning into scare tactics and for urging vaccination among a group who are still not eligible for the recommended vaccine.
The federal government released two ads at the weekend, one featuring the young woman, which also carries a message for people to stay at home and get tested, and the other showing a parade of arms bearing Band-Aids after vaccination with the tagline: “Arm yourself against Covid-19.”
Experts say the current system is bound to leak and might be unsustainable in the face of more transmissible strains such as Delta
Breaches of Australia’s quarantine system have substantially increased this year, with data showing there have been as many leaks recorded in the past three months as there were last year.
There have been up to 30 breaches – where a community case of Covid has been traced back to an infection in quarantine – since the system was established in March last year for Australian citizens and permanent residents returning home. Twenty of those occurred this year.
Masks must be worn in all indoor construction sites across NSW and from 13 July in residential common areas as new restrictions placed on people entering greater Sydney. This blog is now closed
That’s where we’ll end today’s live coverage of Covid news.
Here are the key developments:
The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners and the Australian Medical Association have both backed NSW Health’s call for Sydney residents to bring their second shot of AstraZeneca forward to six weeks after the first dose.
Both the RACGP and the AMA said that the six week window made sense, as it would provide quicker protection against catching, spreading and also potentially dying from Covid-19.
We will definitely will be looking at giving boosters for those who get it early.
You will actually have a benefit from coming in early, because we’ll keep you on that list.”
We’re going to wind things up for the evening. Here’s a reminder of what we learned today:
NSW has updated its list of venues of concern. New close contact venues include Bupa Dental in Miranda from 10.50am to 12pm on Wednesday 7 July, Chemist Warehouse in Punchbowl on Thursday 8 July from 9.20am to 9.40am and Direct Trade in Merrylands from 2.20pm to 2.50pm on Saturday 3 July.
Having long encouraged universities to find funding elsewhere, politicians now home in on their ties to China to argue that they’ve lost their way
Outside the political sphere, much of Australia’s China panic centres on university campuses. This is hardly surprising, given the deep connections of the Australian higher-education sector to China.
In 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic hit, higher education brought in some A$12bn in export revenue, most of it from China. With more than 150,000 Chinese international students enrolled, some institutions relied on that single revenue stream to make up a quarter of their total budget before the current drop-off. Mandarin is the second language of campus life in most universities these days; Confucius Institutes have been established at 13 universities; partnerships and MOUs with Chinese universities proliferate in many fields. Australian academics now collaborate more with colleagues in China than in any other foreign country: one report found that an incredible 16.2% of scientific papers by Australian researchers – almost one in six – were co-authored with researchers in China, with papers in the fields of materials science, chemical engineering and energy topping the list.
Premier Gladys Berejiklian says 29 of the new cases were infectious in the community as new restrictions announced for Sydney; state and territory leaders meet with PM to discuss the vaccine rollout. Follow latest updates
Big news: NSW families minister Alister Henskens confirms the government's NDIS independent assessments plan "will not proceed". pic.twitter.com/gJByatuma2
Although Victoria's disability minister Luke Donnellan is slightly less categorical about it in his statement. pic.twitter.com/zFIYR1bIgc
Disgruntled cabinet colleagues touting a plan B are making NSW premier’s job of imposing a lockdown on the public even harder
The New South Wales premier, Gladys Berejiklian, emerged from her crisis briefing at the Department of Health on Friday looking more stressed – with good reason.
All the signs are that NSW is losing control of this outbreak of the Delta strain of Covid-19, despite the increasingly stringent lockdown rules.
The New South Wales premier, Gladys Berejiklian, has announced stricter lockdown measures following 44 new locally acquired Covid-19 cases, saying low vaccination rates are a significant concern. 'We cannot live with this variant,' she says. 'No place on Earth has unless they have their vaccination rates much, much higher than what we do. Because otherwise it subjects the population to thousands and thousands of hospitalisations, thousands of deaths.'
Researcher accidentally spots tiny insect walking on the underside of the water surface as if it were a pane of glass
An Australian beetle has been observed walking upside down along the surface of water – the first instance that such behaviour has been visually documented.
The tiny aquatic beetle, about 6mm to 8mm in length, has been recorded scuttling along the undersurface of a pool of water in New South Wales.
The pharmaceutical giant Pfizer says there is no change in the number of doses the company has contracted to deliver to Australia over 2021 – contradicting reports asserting the Morrison government had secured a “game-changing deal” to triple its access to the jabs.
The prime minister – who has been under significant political pressure because of the slow pace of the vaccination rollout, pressure that has ramped up during the lockdown of greater Sydney – embarked on a media blitz on Friday to argue the pace of the vaccination rollout was accelerating.
For more than 20 years, Aboriginal photographer Wayne Quilliam has captured significant Indigenous events across Australia, from the national apology to the Stolen Generations to the Garma, Barunga and Yeperenye festivals. In his travels through country, Quilliam often visits communities to teach Indigenous youth how to capture their own lives through a lens. His book, Culture is Life, is a modern, photographic celebration of the diversity of Indigenous Australians
More than four in 10 Australians think Chinese are coming and analysts say that’s due to government’s ‘drums of war’ rhetoric
More than four in 10 Australians are worried China may attack Australia, according to new polling, expressing a level of fear that is nearly as high as among Taiwan’s population.
The Australia Institute, a progressive thinktank that commissioned polling in both Australia and Taiwan, said the “astounding” findings may be partly explained by some government figures in Canberra “beating the drums of war”.