Australia COVID LIVE updates NSW Police open probe into lockdown protests federal government to buy 85m Pfizer booster doses
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Premier Gladys Berejiklian, NSW Health’s Dr Jeremy McAnulty and NSW Police Deputy Commissioner Gary Worboys will provide an update on COVID-19 at 11.
Latest postsQueensland Deputy Premier Steven Miles, Health Minister Yvette D’Ath and Chief Health Officer Dar Jeannette Young provide a COVID-19 update.
Primary schools should be considered an “essential industry†and could reopen safely even before community transmission of COVID-19 returns to zero, health experts say, as students across Sydney head into their third week of remote learning with no end in sight.
Families report that while some students have found it easy to slot back into the same remote learning systems they had last year, for others it is harder the second time around and the novelty has well and truly worn off.
Francesca Pinzone and James Barron with their children, Luca, 9, Noah, 7, and Allegra, 5, homeschooling in Randwick.Credit:Janie Barrett
Schools are closed as part of the wider Sydney lockdown until at least July 30. Most children are learning from home remotely, while the children of essential workers and others who cannot learn from home are permitted to be on site.
Schools have varied in their messaging to encourage parents to keep their children at home, as they try to have only a skeleton staff on school premises each day.
Read more here.
You might have noticed this week that Victorian health authorities have introduced a new metric to track how effective the state’s lockdown is going: the number of cases who were infectious while in the community.
At the beginning of this week, Victorians were told that 92.31 per cent of Monday’s cases were in the community while infectious, meaning more than nine out of ten people had not gone into isolation during their infectious period.
Those positives not being in isolation could have occurred for several reasons, including that the lockdown might not have started at the time they became infectious. But it did mean they could have been visiting places, generating new exposure sites and potentially spreading the virus to people outside their close household contacts.
We’ve seen that number come down gradually over the past week. This is a breakdown of the per cent of cases infectious in the community:
Tuesday: 30.77%
Wednesday: 27.27%
Thursday: 7.69%
Friday: 21.43%
Saturday: 16.67%
Sunday: 0%
What’s encouraging about the numbers released on Sunday morning is that not one of the cases was out in the community while infectious. This means the only people that could have been infected are those household or workplace contacts (for people who are essential workers) who can be easily tracked down and isolate, or who have already been isolating themselves.
This graph by data website COVIDbase Australia does a good job of contrasting the number of positive cases against the number of people in the community while infectious, and how it’s gradually dropped throughout the week.
It’s also the metric, 100 per cent isolating during their infectious period, that Victorian Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton often mentioned as an ideal precondition of Victorians exiting lockdown as planned at midnight on Tuesday.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has described protests in Melbourne and Sydney against lockdown laws on Saturday as “stupidity writ-largeâ€.
Speaking on Sky News Australia on Sunday morning, Mr Frydenberg said the images of protesters clashing with police were “shocking†and people were rightly concerned of the implications.
“Those protesters should be condemned, for not just breaking the health orders and therefore breaking the law, but for putting in danger their fellow Australians,†he said.
“Those protests have no place in the middle of this crisis, in the middle of this pandemic.“
Thousands of people took to the streets in Sydney to protest lockdown restrictions.Credit: Brook Mitchell
Mr Frydenberg said the government’s acquisition of 85 million Pfizer doses for booster next year was a significant development and welcomed revised medical advice from Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation strongly recommending all adults in NSW to be vaccinated with whichever type of vaccine is available.
He said further vaccines would made made available to NSW however the changed advice was “extremely significantâ€
“It’s a no-brainer, just get vaccinated,†Mr Frydenberg said.
“What we now have is the spread of the virus in NSW and the dangers that poses to people’s health. If you get COVID you have a one in one-hundred chance of dying, the international experience tells us that,†he said.
“From complications to the AstraZeneca vaccine it’s one in a million.â€
Two men have been charged with allegedly striking a police horse following an anti-lockdown protest that shut down the city on Saturday.
NSW Police have set up a strike force comprising of 22 detectives who worked through the night to track down more than 3500 protesters who breached coronavirus restrictions and marched through Sydney’s CBD to protest widespread lockdowns in NSW.
During the operation, officers were assaulted, and police horses were struck and pushed.
Following the protest, Strike Force Seasoned was established to investigate persons who committed offences associated with the unauthorised protest and breach of Public Health Orders.
Read more here.
NSW Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant will appear in a TikTok livestream Q&A event this evening to answer questions relating to the pandemic NSW and vaccinations.
TikTok Australia and New Zealand Global Public Policy Director Brent Thomas the company was committed to sharing useful and credible information.
“At TikTok, we want Australians to get back to doing what they love - safely. We know there’s a lot we can’t do right now, but listening to our trusted health experts and doing the right thing is one way we can all help each other during these difficult times,†Mr Thomas said in a statment.
“As part of this discussion, Dr Kerry Chant will be busting myths, giving her expert tips on combatting COVID-19, clarifying rules, as well as delving into some of the most burning questions from our community.
“Our goal for the Ask Dr Chant: LIVE Q&A initiative is simple: provide accurate and credible information on how to combat COVID-19 and highlight the importance of getting vaccinated from a trusted expert and share in a bit of levity while at we’re at it - because we could use a laugh right now.â€
The event will be broadcast on TikTok Australia’s account tonight at 7.00pm
Victoria has recorded 11 new local cases of COVID-19 as authorities ventilate concerns about Saturday’s anti-lockdown protest in Melbourne with the state poised to ease restrictions this week.
There was one new case in hotel quarantine and there are currently 179 cases active in Victoria. Health authorities received 32,385 tests on Saturday, and delivered 17,370 vaccine doses.
As at 8am on Sunday, the Victorian Health Department had not added any new exposure sites overnight, with the most recent venues that were exposed, two tier-2 sites published at about 7.30pm on Saturday, located in Fitzroy and Hawthorn.
On Saturday the signs were promising for a lifting of stay-at-home orders at 11.59pm, Tuesday, however with the NSW outbreak getting worse and the continual threat of the more infectious Delta strain, authorities are expected to act with caution. (edited)
Each time a new exposure site is listed in his community, Mildura Base Public Hospital boss Terry Welch immediately fears losing a large part of his workforce to quarantine.
“Every time a coffee shop got listed, I was having a heart attack,†Mr Welch said of the recent exposure sites listed in Mildura.
At least 55 hospital staff have had to isolate after four Mildura residents tested positive to coronavirus, and numerous locations were named as exposure sites.
Cafes, the local pool, a supermarket and other food outlets were among the many tier one locations named locally in the past week.
Mr Welch said the tight nature of regional communities meant it was more likely staff would visit the same cafes and other venues that would later emerge as exposure sites, forcing them to stay home from work.
“The variability in staffing has been our biggest challenge.â€
Read more here.
State lockdowns to stop the spread of coronavirus will leave workers hundreds of dollars out of pocket even after government payments, with those in Sydney’s south-west and retail staff across Melbourne among the worst affected.
Analysis of Australian Bureau of Statistics labour force data by The Sydney Morning Herald/The Age shows some of the most locked-down areas in Sydney are home to a high concentration of workers in the retail and construction sectors, both of which are financially exposed to new restrictions aimed at stopping the spread of coronavirus.
The closure of construction sites and retail outlets will hit one in four workers in south-west Sydney.Credit:Janie Barrett
At the same time, modelling undertaken by the Parliamentary Library for the Greens shows part-time casual staff in Sydney and Melbourne working in retail, hospitality and beauty will be materially worse off when replacing their usual pay with state and federal government support.
The closure of construction sites and retail outlets will hit one in four workers in south-west Sydney, where more than 47,000 people work in these two industries, the ABS data shows. Another 10,000 work in accommodation and food services. One in 10 employees in this area, or about 20,400, works in the critical health care and social assistance sector.
Read more here.
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