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Coronavirus Australia live update: Victoria reports six deaths and 532 Covid-19 cases and NSW 17 new cases Coronavirus Australia live update: Victoria reports six deaths and 532 Covid-19 cases and NSW 17 new cases
(32 minutes later)
Australia records highest daily one-day total of cases since start of pandemic, as Andrews announces 683 active cases linked to aged care in Victoria, and in Sydney the Thai Rock Wetherill Park cluster rises to 70. Follow latest updatesAustralia records highest daily one-day total of cases since start of pandemic, as Andrews announces 683 active cases linked to aged care in Victoria, and in Sydney the Thai Rock Wetherill Park cluster rises to 70. Follow latest updates
To regional areas now.
Chant said she is “incredibly pleased with the response of the Bateman’s Bay community” to the outbreak at the Soldiers Club earlier this month.
Berejiklian said that NSW-based health staff staff who work at Wangaratta hospital, about an hour’s drive into Victoria, had been granted an exemption to quarantine requirements to allow them to continue to attend work.
She said that concession was granted based on health advice.
At the same press conference, NSW treasurer Dominic Perrottet announced a $78m stamp duty relief program for first home buyers, which will remove the stamp duty on newly-built homes valued at below $800,000 and give a stamp duty concession on homes valued up to $1m.
More detail from AAP:
Chant reported the warnings, mentioned here previously, asking people who attended the Thai Rock restaurant at Potts Point to self-isolate and get tested.
But she also asked all residents in two western Sydney suburbs to come forward and get tested to ensure there’s no undetected spread in those communities.
Chant said:
The NSW premier, Gladys Berejiklian, has praised hospitality businesses in that state for complying with new laws, which came into effect on Friday, saying there has been a “marked improvement in businesses being Covid-safe”.
Berejiklian said:
The chief health officer, Dr Kerry Chant, said three of the 17 new cases recorded in NSW in the past 24-hours were close contacts of cases connected to the outbreak centred around the Thai Rock restaurant in Wetherill Park.
Four more cases were linked to the funeral cluster at St Brendan church. Eight were travellers in hotel quarantine. Two more are still under investigation.
The two under investigation are the case linked to the Thai Rock restaurant at Potts Point, reported last night, and a man in his 40s in south-western Sydney.
There are currently five people with Covid-19 in intensive care in NSW, and one person on a ventilator.
New Zealand has reported another day with no new cases of Covid-19 – the third day in a row.
All of the country’s 21 active cases of the virus were diagnosed in travellers returning to the country, all of whom are quarantined in government-managed isolation facilities.
Only New Zealanders, and essential workers given exemptions, are allowed to enter the country. All travellers spend two weeks in quarantine, during which they are tested twice for the coronavirus.
New Zealand has recorded 1,206 confirmed cases of the virus since the pandemic began, with 22 deaths.
There is no known community transmission of the virus, widely attributed to a swift, early lockdown of the country. Health officials said on Monday that it had been 87 days since the last case of Covid-19 was acquired locally from an unknown source.
New Zealand now has no restrictions in place on daily life other than the border measures.
That is it from the Victorian update. I’ll bring you some more details from NSW shortly but first, New Zealand has to brag.
Andrews said he did not want to talk about people peddling coronavirus conspiracy theories or filming themselves breaching public health orders for the purpose of ... views? Defending rights that are not actually rights?
But then he got annoyed and talked about it anyway.
Andrews said that state parliament is still resuming on Tuesday, but may have to be limited in number.
A few other points that have been made during this lengthy press conference.
Whenever there is an outbreak in aged care, all residents and staff are tested.
Genomic testing is underway to trace the aged care outbreaks, but Sutton hasn’t seen it yet.
Andrews maintains it would not be “feasible” to move all aged care residents to hospital when an outbreak occurs, “and I don’t think it would be the safest thing for that to occur”.
Since the Cedar Meats outbreak, Victoria has changed its policy around outbreaks in abattoirs so that every employee at a facility with a positive case is now classed as a close contact and asked to quarantine as a precaution. Andrews said:
Sutton says Victoria’s contact-tracing team is not yet overwhelmed, that it can handle “600, 700, 800 interviews a day. I hope we don’t get there but we could if we get there”.
He said the ADF is door-knocking as part of contact tracing now, and they have discovered a number of people who are not at home.
Sutton said it was a “huge challenge” for public health staff to monitor more than 4,000 active coronavirus cases.Sutton said it was a “huge challenge” for public health staff to monitor more than 4,000 active coronavirus cases.
Sutton said there was a lag in people presenting in intensive care, and he expected to see an increase in people in the ICU and needing ventilators the next few weeks.Sutton said there was a lag in people presenting in intensive care, and he expected to see an increase in people in the ICU and needing ventilators the next few weeks.
Sutton said it can take longer in a second wave to contain the outbreak, but that modelling produced for the health department suggests that today could be the peak of cases in Victoria.
He said if the public is alarmed by the numbers, and “if that motivates you to do the right thing, please consider what the consequences are of our increase in daily numbers”.
He said a consequence of the increase in daily numbers would be more people in hospital, more in ICU, and more dead.
Sutton said there is “some stability” in the daily infection numbers in Victoria, and there are “some postcodes where there has either been plateauing or a decrease in daily numbers”.
Suburbs where that is happening include North Melbourne and Flemington, which Sutton said reflected the “intensive management of those cases in the towers and speaks to the fact that if you can support people to get tested, support them in their isolation and quarantine, then you can drive down numbers across entire postcodes”.
Conversely numbers in suburbs like Brimbank and greater Dandenong have increased.
Andrews said he will look at closing certain industries if the workplace transmission of coronavirus is not slowed.
But he said his health advisors have not recommend taking that step at this stage.
He was asked the question specifically with regards to meatworks.
He added:
As of last week 1,200 people in Victoria have applied for the $1,500 hardship payment available to people who test positive to Covid-19 and don’t have access to sick leave, but only 192 people had actually received that money.
Andrews agreed that was not acceptable, and said he had “asked for any and all resources that need to be deployed to get those payments made as quickly as possible”.
Victorian premier Daniel Andrews said that aged care residents are being moved out of aged care facilities and into hospital “when it is deemed clinically appropriate for their safety, for their care”.
Andrews said managing aged care was a “shared responsibility” between the state and federal government, and the private and not-for-profit and religious sectors.
On the issue of understaffing in aged care, he said “staffing matters are principally a matter for the federal government and the people who run those aged care facilities”.
But he said he would not comment on what was a federal government responsibility or a private responsibility and what was the responsibility of the state government, because he said that was unhelpful.
Sutton said he is not aware of any aged care facility that is short of PPE.
He said a “significant number” of aged care workers have tested positive, “coming to hundreds now”.
Back in Victoria, the chief health officer Brett Sutton said the majority of the 683 active cases linked to aged care outbreaks in Victoria are residents.
He said the biggest outbreaks also included a number of staff who had tested positive.
He said some cases had spread because of staff working casually at more than one aged care facility, which is why that had been curbed earlier this month.
New South Wales recorded 17 new cases of Covid-19 to 8pm last night.Of those, eight are international travellers in hotel quarantine. Another four are linked to the funeral gatherings cluster, three are household contacts of cases associated with Thai Rock Wetherill Park, and two are under investigation.There are now 70 cases linked to the cluster at Thai Rock Wetherill Park. The Crossroads Hotel cluster, which did not record any new cases yesterday, is at 56.
The chief health officer, Professor Brett Sutton, said Victoria was at a “very challenging stage” of the outbreak.
That’s in part because those infected are, on average, younger and of working age, and infected at the workplace.
There are 84 cases connected to St Basil’s home for the aged in Fawkner, 82 at Estia aged care, 77 at Epping Gardens aged care in Epping, 62 in Menarock life aged care in Essendon, 53 at Glenndale aged care in Werribee, 57 in Kirk Bray presbyterian homes in Kilsyth and 50 in Estia aged care in Heidelberg.
Said Sutton:
He urged aged care workers not to go to work when they have symptoms.
Andrews said there were 150 additional on-site inspections by WorkSafe last week, particularly in high-risk worksites, and he would report on the findings of those inspections on compliance later.