Category Archives: Coronavirus

Aged care sector warns ADF assistance not enough to address ‘stark’ staff shortages

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Unions and providers welcome one-month extension of workforce support but say tens of thousands of aged care workers unavailable

The aged care sector has warned that a pledge of additional military assistance will not be enough to solve the “stark” staff shortages linked to the current Covid-19 wave, which has seen the number of active outbreaks and the weekly death toll nearly double in a single month.

The federal government announced overnight it would extend Australian defence force support for aged care from its previous August endpoint until the end of September, plus boost the available military workforce by more than 200 personnel to help the sector cope with the current Omicron wave.

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Biden ‘doing just fine’ after testing positive for Covid, White House says

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Ashish Jha, coronavirus response coordinator, and physician Kevin O’Connor say president contracted BA.5 variant

Joe Biden is “feeling well” and “doing just fine” after testing positive for Covid, the White House coronavirus response coordinator said.

Appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation, Ashish Jha said: “So it is the BA.5 variant, which is about 80% of infections. But thank goodness, our vaccines and therapeutics work well against it, which is why I think the president’s doing well.

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Government ‘recognises concern’ over monkeypox with 44 cases recorded – as it happened

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Labor wants consensus between business and unions – Burke

Burke says “everything is on the table” including the potential for fixed enterprise bargaining. He also says that the government would like to seek consensus between business and union groups if it can. Asked specifically about a deal struck between the ACTU and the Business Council last year, Burke says he doesn’t know whether that is possible now but he’d be interested in exploring it.

If I can find agreements where there’s consensus I don’t know whether the consensus of that agreement of a couple of years ago still existed in identical form, but if a consensus like that turns up at the job summit you could work on the basis I will be inclined to grab it, because that did have safeguards around it to prevent workers from in fact going backwards.

When you don’t have an energy policy for a decade that’s inflationary. When you have a skills crisis and refuse to invest in skills, that’s inflationary. So in establishing the first bill will be dealing with in the Parliament will be jobs and Skills Australia, we have already had Chris Bowen taking action in terms of making sure we are dealing with the energy crisis. But none of this turns around straight away.

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Covid hits a third of Australia’s aged care homes as 6,000 residents infected

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Providers call for urgent support as 3,400 staff infected in 1,013 facilities and fears two-thirds of homes could soon have outbreaks

Aged care providers are calling for urgent action to protect residents and staff from a winter Covid-19 wave which is hitting more than one-third of the country’s facilities.

The Aged and Community Care Providers Association said 6,000 residents and 3,400 staff were infected in 1,013 facilities as of Thursday.

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China says Xi Jinping given local Covid jab as it seeks to ease vaccine safety fears

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Rare disclosure comes as China struggles to increase elderly immunisation rates amid online rumours of side-effects

China’s Covid-19 vaccines are safe and have been given to leaders of the state and ruling Communist party, officials said, as Beijing steps up efforts to allay public concerns about safety that risk hampering its vaccination drive.

“China’s state and party leaders have all been vaccinated against Covid-19 with domestically made shots,” said Zeng Yixin, deputy head of the National Health Commission, on Saturday.

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International doctors unable to work in Australia due to ‘broken system’, experts say

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Health leaders call for streamlining of complex registration process as overseas-trained doctors look elsewhere for work

Hundreds of foreign-trained doctors living in Australia have been unable to work due to what critics say is a “broken system”, amid calls for the process to be improved to help address chronic workforce shortages in the health sector.

The health minister, Mark Butler, had flagged his concerns about the registration for international medical graduates (IMGs), saying he has sought advice about how to speed up registration for doctors already in the country.

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Inside the remote California county where the far right took over: ‘Civility went out the window’

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In Shasta county the pandemic intensified political divisions, and many officials quit or were pushed out amid bitter tensions

At some point in the last two years, Janine Carroll started avoiding certain grocery stores in her hometown of Redding, California. The retired grandmother could hear the taunts people made to those like her who chose to wear a face mask to fend off Covid-19. “You never know anymore what the atmosphere is going to be when you walk into any given place,” she said.

Masks are just one symbol of the divisions gripping Shasta county, a remote, heavily forested region in far northern California that has long considered itself an outlier in a deep Blue state.

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‘Covid is not going to go away’: Australia will require public health measures for foreseeable future, say experts

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Vaccine inequity and emerging variants mean the future of the pandemic is increasingly uncertain, researchers say

In May 2021, Australia’s chief medical officer, Prof Paul Kelly, described how Covid vaccines were our “ticket out of the pandemic”. Vaccination, he said, would give Australians “a life with more certainty”.

More than one year later, Australia’s Covid-19 vaccination rate is among the highest in the world.

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Joe Biden’s mild Covid symptoms are improving, doctor says

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White House seeks to create ‘teachable moment’ after president’s diagnosis on Thursday

The White House physician has said Joe Biden’s mild Covid-19 symptoms are improving and that he is responding well to treatment, as the administration worked to portray the image of a president on the job despite his illness.

Biden had an elevated temperature of 99.4F on Thursday, but that went down with Tylenol, according to a new note from Dr Kevin O’Connor.

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Government establishes new measures at airports to stop FMD; 63 Covid deaths – as it happened

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US ambassador arrives in Australia

The new US ambassador to Australia, Caroline Kennedy, has arrived this morning and told the media she feels “lucky … to serve here and to live here.”

There’s a big agenda and I can’t wait to get started. Personally this means a great deal to me. My my husband is here with me. We first came to Australia on our honeymoon 36 years ago, almost exactly, because three days ago was our anniversary. Then we are were fortunate to come back with our children when we were in Japan. So we met so many wonderful people and I can’t believe that I’m lucky enough to get a chance to serve here and to live here and get to know even more people.

The weather and staff shortages were all worse than expected.

We are doing the best we can – the show will go on rain, hail or shine.

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Japan urges ‘highest level of vigilance’ as Omicron subvariant drives record Covid surge

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People in Okinawa asked to avoid non-essential outings amid new wave of infections driven by highly transmissible BA.5

Japan’s government has urged people to exercise the “highest level of vigilance” after the country reported a record number of new Covid-19 cases in a new wave of infections driven by the highly transmissible BA.5 subvariant.

More than 186,000 cases were recorded nationwide on Thursday, while Tokyo easily beat its existing daily record with 31,878 cases. The capital, along with Osaka and Fukuoka, were among 30 of the country’s 47 prefectures to report record highs this week.

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Plea for Queensland to resume publishing vaccination status of Covid fatalities

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Experts say data could help convince public to get booster shots as state’s Covid hospitalisations reach record levels

A leading infectious disease expert has questioned why Queensland has stopped releasing the vaccination status of Covid fatalities, as the state struggles to convince residents to get booster shots, despite record hospitalisations from the virus.

Queensland has the lowest rate of Covid booster shots in the country, with less than half the state having received a third dose.

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Australia news live: childcare workers announce strike; election violence in PNG; Frydenberg joins Goldman Sachs

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Childcare workers have voted to strike in September, after years of poor pay and conditions

Linda Burney says she’s ‘not going to be rushed’ on Indigenous voice referendum

Linda Burney, the minister for Indigenous Australians, is on ABC radio speaking about the enshrinement of the Indigenous voice in the constitution.

This is not just symbolic, it is going to have real impacts on the lives of First Nations people.

I am not going to be rushed into timelines. We are going to do this properly.

I would find it incredulous for people not to support what is a very generous and gracious ask.

Remember that this is an advisory body only. It is not usurping the sovereignty of the parliament. Is is not a third chamber.

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Health department defends Australian Covid vaccine ads criticised as ‘very hard to find’

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Health expert says health videos contain key messages but it’s difficult to find and share them

The Department of Health has defended its $11m advertising campaign for Covid vaccine boosters in response to concerns the communication began too late and is not prominent enough.

The health minister, Mark Butler, last month launched a six-week winter advertising campaign to encourage Australians to get vaccinated for Covid and influenza, and to raise awareness of antiviral medication for those who contract Covid.

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Australia news live updates: Greens aim to ‘improve and pass’ Labor climate bill; Andrews rules out mask mandates as nation records 90 Covid deaths;

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No change in Operation Sovereign Borders policy

Clare O’Neil is asked about the desperate situation in Sri Lanka, where many people are trying to find a way out.

Operation Sovereign Borders is Australian government policy.

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Anthony Albanese stops short of calling for Australians to work from home amid Covid surge

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Prime minister says people should stay home if they are sick but there is no prescriptive position on working from home

Anthony Albanese has stopped short of calling for Australians to work from home if they can, as the chief medical officer, Paul Kelly, advised yesterday in the face of the rising Covid wave, saying the nation needed a “balance” to also consider the interests of business.

Despite numerous questions across a radio interview and a press conference about the latest recommendation from the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee that employers should allow working from home if feasible, the prime minister did not directly make that request himself.

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Anger in China after officials break into homes in hunt for Covid contacts

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Officials in Guangzhou apologise for ‘violent’ behaviour after 84 homes broken into during search for possible close contacts

Authorities in southern China have apologised for breaking into the homes of people who had been taken to a quarantine hotel, in the latest example of heavy-handed virus-prevention measures that have sparked a rare public backlash.

State media said that 84 homes in an apartment complex in Guangzhou city’s Liwan district had been opened in an effort to find any “close contacts” hiding inside and to disinfect the premises.

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Covid: European governments must urgently boost monitoring, WHO says

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‘Waiting for the autumn will be too late,’ says regional director as Omicron variants drive threefold surge in cases over past six weeks

The World Health Organization has called on European governments to urgently reinforce rather than reduce Covid-19 monitoring, warning of a potentially difficult winter as a new wave of infections sweeps across the continent.

Hans Kluge, the WHO’s regional director for Europe, said it was now “abundantly clear” that the region faced a surge driven by the highly transmissible Omicron variants BA.2 and BA.5 and that it would intensify further as indoor mixing increases in the autumn.

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New Zealand Covid chief’s farewell party ruined … by Covid

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Dr Ashley Bloomfield dramatically scales back planned event, including cancelling the karaoke, in face of Omicron surge

New Zealand’s Covid chief has had his farewell party scuppered by a rising wave of Omicron cases.

“We’ve canceled karaoke,” the director general of health, Dr Ashley Bloomfield, said when questioned about his plans for farewelling the high-stress role. “We’ll do that later in the year, I hope, if the staff still want to come.”

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Calls for employers to allow working from home as 75 Covid deaths recorded – as it happened

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Victorian students aged eight and over are being urged to wear masks when indoors to help counter the Covid-19 surge.

The request comes in a joint letter from the state education department and independent and Catholic schools.

I respect the fact that people on the crossbench were elected to deliver action on climate change and our government wants to work with them to do just that.

That’s why one of the very first acts of the new government will be to legislate that higher ambition. They want more than the 43% that Labor is offering though.

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