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Coronavirus Australia live news: Victoria premier Daniel Andrews to provide Covid update in press conference as PM says vaccine will be mandatory Coronavirus Australia live news: Victoria premier Daniel Andrews provides Covid update in press conference as PM says vaccine will be mandatory
(32 minutes later)
‘My view on this is pretty clear and not for turning,’ prime minister says. Follow today’s news live‘My view on this is pretty clear and not for turning,’ prime minister says. Follow today’s news live
Brett Sutton says he wouldn’t be looking at things that closely - and that not all issues are immediately apparent
Back in Victoria, chief medical officer Brett Sutton is asked about people being able to walk three kms to their local park to exercise, but not drive.
He says that may change:
But despite pointing the finger at the states, in this case, Victoria, Scott Morrison insists he is leaving the blame game to others.
(His words would suggest otherwise, but you could argue that until you are blue in the face and not get a response other than ‘I’m focused on the now’)
Scott Morrison:Scott Morrison:
The prime minister is standing in front of a lot of people in white coats as he repeats the announcement that Australian has signed an agreement for access to the Oxford University vaccine, if it is successful. Back to Scott Morrison for a moment - he has been asked about aged care, and whether or not he attaches himself to successes, but falls back on ‘it’s the state’s responsibility’ when things go bad (I’ll let you be the judge of that)
#Update: this update contains no update Q: We have a national royal commission into aged care, you say there’s federal responsibility, Daniel Andrews keeps saying it’s a federal responsibility. Is there an element here of you being happy to own the successes when it comes to dealing with the pandemic but not the failures?
It was announced this morning. There have been wall to wall interviews on it. Nothing has changed in those hours. Morrison:
Scott Morrison will be holding a press conference around the same time as Daniel Andrews. I think that’s an unkind assessment, and it doesn’t bear out the facts.
Despite there being 23 other hours in the day, everyone loves 11am. There is a combination of challenges we have with the pandemic.
It’s 11am for Daniel Andrews’s press conference. There is a public health issue and there is a specific aged care issue and that’s where responsibilities merge.
The Australian Unemployed Workers Union has responded to the pension (and other payments) indexation freeeze: And when have you a community outbreak like we’ve had in Victoria, that’s where those responsibilities do overlap.
The official vaccine agreement statement is out: Certainly, we have had to lead the response in responding to the community outbreak in Victoria, but I think the best demonstration that this is a shared responsibility is the formation of the response centre.
Annastacia Palaszczuk has defended the border controls, which extends to the state’s hospitals: It’s a combined effort of Victorian and Commonwealth officials.
Given there have been reports of the impact of the Queensland border closure on NSW people – including heart wrenching stories of parents being separated from their ill newborns, here is a story on a new Queensland mum, stranded in Victoria after cancer treatment, because she can’t get permission to travel through NSW to get back home (where she has been granted an exemption to enter) We understand our responsibilities and we will be responsible for those, but when have you a community pandemic, the virus will find its way into many places.
The border closures are having a terrible impact on a lot of people. It’s awful and heartbreaking. It can find its way into shopping centres. It can find its way into workplaces. It can find its way potentially into schools but thankfully that hasn’t been a significant issue here in Australia and many other places and so it’s the overlapping of public health responsibilities which sit with states and federal aged care regulation responsibilities sit with the Federal Government so, yes, it is a complex set of responsibilities and they are shared and that’s why we’re working together.
Dragging politics into it, to score points or prosecute agendas, is disgusting. I keep stressing - working together, not against each other, is the way we manage these impacts. And so all I said this morning, I think, to take a very binary approach to this, I think is overly simplistic and doesn’t let Australians know the complexity of responsibilities that are here.
Queensland is working with the Australian Border Force to strengthen its northern border – that would be the ocean – after an increase of Covid cases in Papua New Guinea. Reporters have probed Morrison about whether the deal with Astra Zeneca is iron-clad and what the cost implications might be.
The most recent case of Covid recorded in Queensland today comes from the positive diagnosis of a person who recently returned from PNG (they have been in hotel quarantine), so expect ocean patrols on the northern tip to increase. Morrison said the cost is “commercial in confidence” - as is whether money has already changed hands.
Just a reminder that during the bushfire crisis, Scott Morrison also deflected responsibility to the states. He said:
There have been calls for this for some time but the federal government is finally going to start releasing the data on the number of people within the National Disability Insurance Scheme – both participants and workers – who have Covid. “We’re at the letter of intent stage, which will lead to an agreement which goes to supply and pricing ... They will be contracts we will be entering into.”
Stuart Robert: Morrison also confirmed that other countries are further along in signing agreements to get the Oxford vaccine. He dismissed concerns Astra Zeneca could drive a hard bargain, telling reporters negotiations are in “good faith”, he is not concerned, and the company is “not looking to profiteer”.
Acting chief medical officer, Paul Kelly, asked why he was only cautiously optimistic two weeks ago. He confirmed this is still his position, but even in the last two weeks there have been promising trials of the vaccine candidate on primates.
The Astra Zeneca is the “first of many”, Kelly says, in addition to the $5m the federal government gave to support the University of Queensland research. He likened it to diversifying an investment portfolio.
Just ducking to NSW for a moment: there have been another seven cases recorded - two are returned travellers.
From AAP:
There has been a “workplace inspection blitz” in Victoria – 724 workplaces have been visited since 19 July – and 62 notices have been issued.
Since the pandemic began, there have been 4911 businesses visited, and 168 notices issued in total.
On infections in aged care and the NDIS, Daniel Andrews says:
So that is just 16,000 tests yesterday - less than the 17,000 which raised concerns that there weren’t enough tests the day before.
Daniel Andrews begins with the daily breakdown of the most recent numbers:
Paul Karp is going to keep watching the Morrison press conference, while I jump across to Daniel Andrews.