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Victoria’s rise in Covid-19 case numbers is occurring so rapidly that contact tracing can no longer be relied upon to unearth all potential clusters in the state, according to epidemiologists who argue health detective work “won’t make much difference when you’ve got thousands of active cases potentially out there”.
On Monday the state’s chief health officer, Brett Sutton, said there were “literally thousands on the phone who are chasing up close contacts and who are talking to them about what quarantine requires of them”, after reports that some close contacts of confirmed cases were waiting up to a week for contact from the state instructing them to self-isolate.
NSW police have released information on the fines they have issued for social distance breaches:
Police have issued a total of 16 Penalty Infringement Notices (PINs) for non-compliance with Covid-19 Public Health Orders across the weekend.
The Business Council of Australia and the Australian Council of Trade Unions – not known for being on the same side of a lot of issues – have released a joint letter calling for a paid pandemic leave scheme:
Declaring a ‘state of disaster’ in Victoria gives police more authority, and hope that Covid cases can be contained within six weeks
Even the vast majority of Victorians who accepted stage 3 restrictions as necessary, if depressing, would have been confronted by what premier Daniel Andrews announced on Sunday. They were the tightest coronavirus restrictions ever imposed in Australia and among the toughest in the world.
Melburnians had just got used to compulsory mask wearing and now are to be confined to their homes from 8pm to 5am except for medical reasons or for essential work, at the risk of a $1,652 fine if they break curfew. Had this ever happened outside war time? There was no such curfew in New Zealand even in their “go early and go hard” response earlier this year.
Federal government may need to give financial aid to sustain Australia’s second biggest economy to limit flow-on effects throughout country
The strict new stage 4 lockdown announced by the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, along with the shutdown of certain industries to be unveiled on Monday, represents a hammer blow to the Australian economy.
They immediately invalidate federal Treasury forecasts released less than a fortnight ago and will require the prime minister, Scott Morrison, to tip buckets of money into Victoria if Australia is to avoid prolonging and deepening what is already an economic disaster.
We know we’re the cautionary tale that the rest of the country is scaring themselves with in order to keep 1.5 metres apart
The morale-boosting markers that were shared across Melbourne during the first lockdown have all but disappeared. Rainbows have peeled off fences, forgotten teddy bears are wedged between Venetian blinds and most of the chalk messages have long washed away.
“This isn’t like the first wave,” our chief health officer, Brett Sutton, said on the Saturday. By the Monday, with the daily presser citing our then record highest number of Covid cases at 532, and cement grey cloud obscuring the sun, Melbourne felt done in. Come Thursday, under a blue sky, with blossoms out and wattle blazing, Victoria clocked 723 – a number that winded the city. And now the fear is back.
A person in Orange, in regional NSW, has tested positive to Covid-19.
The person is a close contact with a known cluster in Sydney, Western NSW Local Health District chief executive Scott McLachlan said today.
The case is currently in isolation in the Orange Local Government Area, but has a residential address outside of the health district. The case is linked to a known cluster in Sydney.
The public health unit has contacted all close contacts. They have been provided with public health information which includes to be tested for Covid-19 and remain in isolation for 14 days.
There are currently 12 people with Covid-19 in hospital in NSW and eight in intensive care, with four of those people on ventilators. About 90 people are being treated for Covid-19 in non-acute, out-of-hospital care.
Migrants drove more than a quarter of regional Australia’s population growth before the coronavirus pandemic forced border closures, AAP reports.
Treasury’s Centre for Population officials on Tuesday told a parliamentary inquiry that overseas migration was behind 26 per cent of regional population growth nationally.
A staff member at the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC) has tested positive for Covid-19, prompting the organisation to close all of its sites today.
In a statement, the ASRC said it closed all its sites this morning for terminal cleans and that staff would get “appropriate leave and full pay” for those who need to get tested or self-isolate.
Given the unprecedented pandemic impacting all our lives, we have been planning for this scenario for months.
We have taken early and swift action to close down all ASRC sites to protect staff, people seeking asylum and the community.
One-size-fits-all approach for sector puts not-for-profits in jeopardy, union warns
The not-for-profit early childcare education sector is struggling to pay up to $9,000 for deep cleaning each time a Covid-19 case is identified, while federal government transition payments may not be enough to keep the sector afloat as parents pull their children out of the system.
The United Workers Union’s director for early childhood education, Helen Gibbons, said the one-size-fits-all approach towards the early childcare sector needed a rethink or the community risked losing not-for-profit childcare centres, which comprise just under half of the sector.
State Liberal Matt Kean calls on his federal counterpart to drop opposition to an independent environment protection authority
The New South Wales environment minister has called on the Morrison government not to “smash through” changes to national conservation laws and to drop its opposition to an independent environment protection authority.
In a significant intervention from a Liberal government minister, Matt Kean questioned his federal counterpart’s rush to introduce draft laws to change the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act while a major review was still under way, saying it was more important to get the detail right.
The AFL roadshow continues with a mini-hub to be created in Cairns, Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has confirmed.
Two yet-to-be named teams will base themselves in the city, and three games will be played at Cazaly’s Stadium. Strict quarantine protocols and the Covidsafe Industry Plan will be rigorously employed, as is the norm these days.
Three @AFL Premiership games will be played at Cazaly’s Stadium and two clubs will relocate to Cairns temporarily with strict quarantine protocols and the COVID Safe Industry Plan in place. It will inject millions of dollars into the local economy and support jobs. #AFL#qldjobspic.twitter.com/MiILnH1DjX
The Australian Education Union says that senior school students and specialist school students should also be allowed to move to flexible learning because of increasing rates of community transmission in Victoria.
More from AAP:
Year 11 and 12 students are being taught in the classroom ahead of exams, as are special school students.
AEU Victorian branch president Meredith Peace said the rigid approach meant some students were missing out and there was additional stress for principals, teachers and support staff.
The Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, was asked again about the lockdown of prisoners in Victoria, after it was revealed that a prison guard who works for security firm G4S at the Port Phillip prison had taken a second job working as a security guard in Melbourne’s bungled hotel quarantine program.
A spokeswoman for G4S told AAP:
In recent days, we have received information relating to an employee who, in early April, undertook secondary employment with a security firm without our knowledge. The staff member concluded this contract work in late April. The matter is now the subject of internal disciplinary processes.
We are not making any changes in that regard as a result of the pandemic.
Mikakos also addressed reports that the hospital in Wangaratta, in north-east Victoria, was left short a significant number of healthcare workers yesterday because the new, tighter border restrictions mean that any healthcare worker based in NSW who travels beyond the border bubble has to quarantine for 14 days upon their return.
That means doctors who live in Albury, which is less than an hour’s drive from Wangaratta, will have to quarantine for two weeks to attend regular shifts or consulting days in the regional Victorian hospital.
He has given me a commitment that he will look at his issue. It is really important that healthcare workers, that is people who work in hospital and paramedics and others, are able to provide those services.
AMA wants national network of contact tracers; calls for low-risk prisoner release; Port Stephens in NSW on Covid-19 high alert. Follow all the latest news and updates, live
Burney was also asked about the Black Lives Matter march planned for Sydney next Tuesday.
She said both organisers and people who attend the rally need to observe the health advice. Organisers are requiring people to wear masks and remain 1.5m away from each other, as they did at earlier rallies in June.
I will not be telling people who have lost loved ones not to demonstrate. But they have a democratic right to see their local member, to write to their local member and make it very clear what their feelings are.
Labor has been advocating for years that there needs to be justice targets in the new Closing the Gap targets and I understand that’s going to happen. But there is absolutely no way that it is OK that something like 400 people have died in custody since the royal commission and that continues to happen and the incarceration rates of Aboriginal people and Aboriginal young people are completely unacceptable.
Labor’s social affairs spokesperson, Linda Burney, said the new permanent jobseeker rate has to be an amount “where people can live with dignity and children, in particular, are not thrown on to the poverty scrapheap”.
Burney told ABC24:
We have heard that the old Newstart rate, which was $550 a fortnight, was just throwing people into poverty, there was absolutely no way it was an incentive to work.
One of the things that Labor is saying very clearly is we believe that the Government missed an enormous opportunity yesterday and that is to announce a permanent increase in JobSeeker, which Labor and others have been arguing for for a very long time.
Investigation into how infection control breaches are believed to have led to a Covid-19 outbreak starts today. Follow all the latest news and updates, live
Neal said the inquiry had received a number of submissions about “what went well, and what went less well” in managing hotel quarantine in Victoria.
He said that, without preempting anything to come in the inquiry, the following issues had arisen for discussion:
Neal said the inquiry, which is not hearing from any witnesses today, will hear evidence “of a scientific and medical nature about what has been understood about the spread of the virus from the hotel quarantine program into the community”.
It will also hear about the impact of the virus in the community, and the “various steps taken by government agencies and public health officials in response to that impact are matters of profound and ongoing significance to this community”.
Understandably, there has been intense community interest and daily commentary in the media about this program. Increasingly over recent weeks there has been growing and understandable community concern about transmission from that program into the general community.
To establish and implement the hotel quarantine program, a range of contractual and other arrangements were entered into between government departments, hotels, a number of private service providers, private security companies, medical services, transport and food providers. It’s anticipated in the course of the inquiry that you will hear from various witnesses that the purposes of the directions and the contractual arrangements entered into was to either eliminate or reduce the public health risk posed by Covid-19 by containing its spread from returned travellers into the community.
As set out in the order in counsel establishing this inquiry, information already available to the inquiry suggests the possibility of a link between many of the cases of coronavirus identified in the Victorian community in the past few weeks and persons who were quarantined under the hotel quarantine program. Comments made by the chief health officer to the media have suggested that it may even be that every case of Covid-19 in Victoria in recent weeks could be sourced to the hotel quarantine program.
Thirty-nine people were detained after police were attacked with “a hail of bottles” at an open-air party in central Frankfurt attended by thousands of youngsters, police in the German city said today..
Five officers were injured in the riot that began at around 3:00 am (0100 GMT) when police intervened to stop a brawl involving around 30 people in Frankfurt’s historic Opera square.
People who travel outside of Ireland have been warned they will invalidate their travel insurance even if the place they visit is on a so-called ‘green list’ of safe countries to by published this week, the Irish Times reports.
It added that travel insurance exclusions denying cover to people who travel contrary to official guides are the norm across the sector. At present, the advice from the Irish Government is that non-essential journeys overseas should be avoided.
Victoria has recorded 363 new Covid-19 cases and three more people have died as premier Daniel Andrews announced face masks will be made mandatory across Melbourne as the state attempts to control a second-wave outbreak of the virus.
At a press conference on Sunday, Andrews appeared wearing a face mask and said residents in metropolitan Melbourne and the Mitchell shire would be required to wear “masks or face coverings”, including bandannas or scarves in public from midnight on Wednesday.
Australia’s acting chief medical officer warns people in Sydney are not taking precautions ‘as seriously’ as in Melbourne
Victoria has recorded 217 new cases of Covid-19 and three more deaths, as the prime minister, Scott Morrison, announced parliament would be postponed due to the health risks of MPs travelling to Canberra from Melbourne and south-western Sydney.
Acting Rural Fire Service commissioner Rob Rogers has been formally appointed to the position, replacing Shane Fitzsimmons as leader of the NSW fire agency.
Rogers began volunteering with the RFS in 1979 and has been acting in the role since April. He was a deputy commissioner during the horrific 2019-2020 fires.
Rob is truly a veteran of the RFS. From his seat on the ‘Belrose Blitz’ (fire tanker) to the commissioner’s chair - the community has benefited from Rob’s leadership in action over successive fire seasons.
We’ve been working in lockstep with Rob Rogers and the RFS to ensure the state is as prepared as it can be to face disaster again this bushfire season.
The Queensland Council for Civil Liberties has called on the state government to release the draft of its bill to increase the maximum penalty for breaching public health orders to six months imprisonment.
The public health act already carries fines of $4,003 for breaching the chief health officer’s directions, which currently includes entering Queensland without a valid border declaration pass.
The proposed further Covid-19 legislation containing prison terms of up to 6 months represents a significant increase in penalties and in that regard the proposed legislation should have been the subject of public consultation.
There has been no consultation with this Council and so far as I am aware no consultation with other stakeholders such as the Queensland Law Society or the Bar Association.
The health department now recommends masks where community transmission of coronavirus is occurring and physical distancing is difficult. From washable cloth face masks to reusable ones and how to wear them, here’s what you need to know
Last week, the national cabinet updated its position on the use of face masks, deciding that people should wear them in locations where there is community transmission of the coronavirus and where social distancing is difficult.
The announcement was a response to rising case numbers in Melbourne, which is now in the early stages of a six-week stage three lockdown.
A dearth of political leadership means abortion drugs remain inaccessible, unsafe and unaffordable for many women
It has been 24 years since the federal government chose the partial privatisation of Telstra over the rights of Australian women to safely terminate a pregnancy with abortion drugs. In 1996, anti-abortion independent Brian Harradine, who held the balance of power in the Senate, agreed to support John Howard’s one-third float of the telecommunications company if the government amended legislation to give the health minister veto to prohibit the import, manufacture or use of abortion drug RU486 (mifepristone).
A perpetual dearth of political leadership in the subsequent quarter century has meant the drugs remain inaccessible, unaffordable and at times unsafe for many women in Australia outside of a certain income or major city.
Guardian Australia analysis and map shows how the pattern of Covid-19 has changed throughout Melbourne. Live data updates will track it as the lockdown continues
A Guardian Australia analysis of Victorian coronavirus cases shows that infections have been increasing in areas outside the locked-down postcodes, and that all significant growth areas are now contained within the wider Melbourne lockdown.
Using data aggregated daily from the dashboard of the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) here, we calculated the number of new cases a day for every local government area in Victoria.