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Sydney aged care home reports 13th coronavirus-related death as three more residents test positive, while Tasmania to lift north-west lockdown. Follow live
North Korean leader had not been seen for three weeks; Ireland and India both extend lockdowns, while global markets fall due to threat of US-China trade war
This is a rare moment when excluding people doesn’t have to mean we don’t like them, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith – so handle your approach with grace
Now that lockdown restrictions are easing a little bit in my area, my family’s been getting a few requests for playdates and dinner visits. It’s exciting but we don’t want to turn our lives into a rotating door of visits and visitors, because there is still risk out there. One of the people who’s been quite persistent in inviting us over lives nearby, and volunteers for the same organisation as me. But geography is where the closeness ends – we don’t have that much in common and, face to face, our conversations are often awkward. If we’re going to expand our small circle we want to prioritise people we like better. Is there a polite way of telling someone we don’t want them in our bubble?
Eleanor says: I’ve been waiting for this moment, the one where our reaction to the risk starts to change, even though the risk itself stays more or less the same. In normal circumstances we expect our reactions to have a half-life: when there’s a fact we can’t change, like “she left me” or “I didn’t get the promotion”, there’s a point when we’re meant to move on.
But when the fact is an ongoing risk, instead of something that recedes into the past, it’s not clear how long our reactions should last. We don’t know what the half-life of fear is meant to be. To some of us it feels as though the fear should be dissolving by now: we’ve had the big reaction, we’ve processed the horror and, like any other grief or upheaval, there’s a point where we need to return to normalcy.
Many Pacific nations are Covid-free and their economies depend on tourism. Cautiously restarting travel there could be an important move
As Australia and New Zealand tentatively celebrate successes in their battles to bring Covid-19 under control, Winston Peters, New Zealand’s deputy prime minister, has raised the possibility of the two nations opening up travel to one another.
The mooted “trans-Tasman bubble” would allow travel between these two countries, which seem – for now – to have brought infection rates under control, while keeping their borders with the rest of the world closed or tightly managed.
Ratings agency says mining giant owned by Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest’ wants to keep prices secret so it can charge more for its ore
Mining giant Fortescue Metals Group, controlled by billionaire Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest, has launched legal action to stop global ratings agency S&P publishing information about the price it charges for iron ore.
A UK court has ordered S&P to stop publishing the information, which Fortescue claims is confidential, but the ratings agency has hit back in a US court, accusing the miner of trying to keep prices secret so it can charge more for its ore.
Another 31 people have died in Ireland and 376 more cases have been diagnosed, the country’s chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan has said.
One of the deaths reported on Wednesday involved a person in the 15-24 age group, the second in this category. Dr Holohan warned the number in intensive care units was too high as the prospect of a rapid easing of movement restrictions dwindles.
That is simply too high and we need to get that down further not only because it is about protecting occupancy but the lower the figure is it is a reflection of better protection of the public and lower levels of spread of the infection.
Bolivia will extend its lockdown against the pandemic until 10 May, the government has announced, though it is planning to relax rules in less affected parts of the country from the following day.
The president Jeanine Áñez has said Bolivia will move to a “dynamic” or “less rigid” quarantine on 11 May, allowing some people to return to work.
Opening the quarantine a little or closing it completely will depend on how the pandemic is being controlled in each region. The Ministry of Health will evaluate every seven days how the pandemic evolves in each region. On that basis, decisions will be taken to relax or harden the quarantine.
Scott Morrison has tightened physical distancing restrictions, but how they are applied will be determined by each state. Find out what’s illegal, and what happens if you break the law
The Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, has defied China and defended the “entirely reasonable and sensible” call for an investigation into the origins of coronavirus, as the international political fallout over the pandemic deepened.
China has been pushing back against criticism from other governments about how it handled the outbreak of Covid-19, which is believed to have started in Wuhan and which has now infected 3 million people worldwide and killed 200,000.
Retail giants are set to rely more heavily on click and collect sales even as lockdown restrictions are eased, with the sector’s peak body cautioning against a rush to fully reopen bricks and mortar stores.
Paul Zahra, Australian Retailers Association (ARA) CEO, believes the shift towards delivery and kerbside pickup will leave a “legacy” in Australians’ shopping habits, and said one “fundamentally positive” impact of the pandemic has been that retailers traditionally reluctant to move online have now come on board.
Waverley council in Sydney’s eastern suburbs has reopened Bondi, Bronte and Tamarama beaches to swimmers and surfers between 7am and 5pm on weekdays. The beaches were closed as Australia’s coronavirus restrictions came into force. They are to remain closed on weekends, and only the water is ‘open’, with sunbathing, walking and jogging on the beach not allowed
Iran reports 96 more deaths; Spain’s death toll shows slight rise; Germany calls for ‘very careful’ easing of lockdown; New Zealand says ‘worst is over’
Formula One plans to start the season in Austria on 5 July and stage between 15 and 18 grands prix this year with the opening races behind closed doors.
The announcement came immediately after the French Grand Prix was cancelled and the news the British Grand Prix will be held without spectators if it goes ahead.
Preparatory work has begun on restarting repairs to Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.
NSW police also say they asked to interview energy minister, but all questions were answered by his lawyers
New South Wales police says it found no evidence that the document Angus Taylor’s office used to attack City of Sydney lord mayor Clover Moore ever existed on the council’s website, casting renewed doubt on the minister’s explanation.
Taylor has repeatedly insisted that the false document he used to wrongly attack Moore for her travel-related emissions was downloaded from the council’s own website.
We thank Aged Care Minister Richard Colbeck and the Chief Medical Officer Prof. Brendan Murphy for joining the aged care industry in constructive dialogue in the national webinar, as we work together to care for and support vulnerable older Australians.
However, we impressed upon them that it is incorrect to characterise the sector as having kept residents isolated, under lock and key, in their rooms. Nor are they secret places.
Australia’s leading aged care providers have banded together to make a statement in response to what the prime minister and chief health minister had to say last week about opening up centres to visits, or face applying to the commonwealth to close.
Almost 1000 aged care providers have signed up to the statement, saying that some facilities made the decision to stop visitation because it was the only way to protect residents, with the decisions being made with “the support of the majority of residents and their families”.
Pressures on aged care workers will further intensify from the major costs of controls and resources needed to continue protecting aged care residents and to allow the safe access for visitors that has been stipulated - but there has been little additional support from Government to achieve this.
The funding provided that equates to an average of $2 per resident per day is not enough for aged care operators to keep winning the fight to keep coronavirus out of aged care homes.
More than 150 Australians and 20 New Zealanders are on the flight from Buenos Aires after being stranded in South America since the outbreak. Follow live
The question about whether kids and teachers go back to school is looming as a brawl that will escalate in the coming week.
Two Labor-led states in particular, Queensland and Victoria, are on a different page of the textbook to the federal government, which wants schools to be open.
In Victoria, the state opposition has begun to grumble about the extended remote learning arrangements.
The vast majority of students in Vic are learning from home because that is the advice from our health experts.
If we did not follow this advice, more than 1 million children, their parents and school staff congregating at schools could spread Coronavirus in our community.
The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners is today launching a nationwide campaign to make sure people don’t neglect health concerns while we’re all in lockdown.
It’s very concerning that some people have potentially been neglecting their health during this pandemic – the last thing we want is a tsunami of serious health issues and worsening chronic conditions coming after this virus, simply because people have stopped taking care of themselves or consulting their GP.
The reason why we are running our campaign Expert Advice Matters is to encourage people to keep taking care of their health. We also want to remind everyone that general practice remains open and expert medical advice matters most.
WHO clarifies ‘immunity passport’ advice; global deaths pass 200,000; Russia case tally passes 80,000; Sweden’s deputy prime-minster admits problems with strategy. This blog is now closed.
Usually hundreds of thousands of Australians would be up before sunrise tomorrow to join ANZAC day dawn services and to honour those who serve and have served. But coronavirus means this year will be different.
While the day has had its elements of public ritual since 1916, much early Anzac Day commemoration was private rather than public, sometimes conducted at the gravesides of Australian soldiers buried in cemeteries in Britain and Australia. Women were prominent in these efforts, honouring the memories of men they might or might not have known by placing flowers on their tombs.
There are other echoes of the past. Anzac Day in 1919 was also disrupted by a major crisis in public health. In New South Wales, where the rate of infection from Spanish influenza was high and the number of deaths – approaching 1,000 by Anzac Day – was alarming, the government had banned public meetings.
Several key developments emerged from the national cabinet meeting earlier today.
Rules around aged care visits, hopes for a restart of community sport, clarification on jobkeeper payments and a repeat of medical advice for school classrooms all made for a busy day.
Fewer than three out of 15 families in NSW far west have broadband, making digital classrooms unviable
Teachers in far western NSW say they have been hand-delivering lessons to Aboriginal students at home because families don’t have reliable access the internet and many don’t have computers for their children to work on.
To allow children to keep learning, Wilcannia central school teachers have been making lesson packs for their students and delivering them in person every few days, on a 9km round trip in the school minibus.
Unemployment in US up by 4.4 million to a total of over 26 million; world has ‘a long way to go’, warns WHO chief; Iran reports lowest new daily infections for a month
Peru’s reported coronavirus cases have rapidly increased this week, reaching 20,914 on Thursday. The country has the second highest number of cases in South America after Brazil despite introducing tough lockdown measures.
The health ministry says it expects patient numbers to peak within the following week, as hospitals strain to deal with the sharp rise in infections. Reuters reports cases of bodies being kept in hallways, masks being reused, and protests from medical workers concerned about their safety.
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