This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen
on .
It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.
Australia Covid live news: NSW to give update; Victoria records 867 cases, four deaths; new Brisbane restrictions after four local Qld cases
Australia Covid live news update: NSW records 863 cases, seven deaths; Victoria 867 cases, four deaths; Brisbane restrictions after four local cases
(32 minutes later)
Follow the latest updates live
Follow the latest updates live
And we’ve switched over to federal health minister, Greg Hunt, who is announcing that the TGA has approved home testing from 1 November.
We are also on standby for the covid update from Victoria, due in two minutes.
Hunt says this is obviously subject to individual tests being approved as “safe and effective” but that the approval was “ an important additional protection” for Australians.
Hazzard is asked about hospitals, and the rising number of people being infected at hospitals has raised the question on if they are a liability.
How this will work and how the tests will be made available is still uncertain.
Here is what the health minister had to say:
Will QLD have different restrictions for the unvaccinated moving forward? This is what D’Ath had to say:
Hazzard has also revealed that lifesaving breast screening services run by BreastScreen NSW will resume soon.
When will a decision be made on the NRL Grand Final? Young says on the actual day (Sunday).
The organisations services were cut back due to the Delta outbreak in NSW, but Director of BreastScreen NSW Sarah McGill said the services would be resuming on a case-by-case basis, based on an assessment of risk.
Young was asked how concerend she was about the situation in the state, and gave a relatively comprehensive answer:
Now for a graph, so you can see NSW’s gradual decline in case numbers in colour:
Queensland CHO, Dr Jeanette Young, has given some details on the cases, including a truck driver who was infectious in community for eight days.
Brad Hazzard has just confirmed some good news, in that the Byron Bay and Tweed areas will be lifted from lockdown tomorrow, as scheduled:
He had stayed at three different locations, raising concerns about transmission.
Earlier, health minister Greg Hunt was asked what he made of NSW’s plan to open up to unvaccinated people from early December. He was asked whether the plan would encourage people to delay getting vaccinated.
Queensland police have confirmed that a man in his 50s has been found dead in hotel quarantine. They confirmed he was an Australian citizen but gave few details:
Hunt:
Queensland health minister Yvette D’ath has just stepped up, announcing that a mask mandate will be applied in the Brisbane city council and Moreton Bay council areas.
Premier Gladys Berejiklian was earlier forced to defend the plan. She said she’d actually gone harder on unvaccinated people than the Doherty Institute modelling had recommended. She told the ABC:
It means residents will need to wear a mask when visiting indoor venues:
It is unclear how the newly announced plan will work with an earlier announcement from the NSW government that it will make it illegal for unvaccinated people to attend venues and businesses.
New Zealand has reported eight new cases of coronavirus in the community, all in Auckland, bringing the total in the outbreak to 1,185. It is the lowest number of new daily cases since the first case of Delta was announced in mid-August. Seven cases have been epidemiologically linked to household cases. The remaining person visited Waitakere hospital on Monday evening and has since been transferred to North Shore hospital. Health officials are working to establish a link.
Some details on the deaths now from NSW health minister Brad Hazzard, who’s said that they included four women and three men.
Wastewater testing has shown an unexpected positive result in Tauranga. That could be down to a previous positive case shedding the virus or an undetected acute case. People in that region are being asked to get tested.
One person was in their 40s, another in their 50s, two in their 70s, two in their 80s and on person in their 90s.
On Tuesday prime minister Jacinda Ardern announced that a further 3,000 managed isolation places will be released from 5pm NZST, for those looking to return to the country between October and December. Additional rooms will be announced in the coming weeks.
Three of them were fully vaccinated, three had recieved one dose and one person was unvaccinated.
Ardern said:
NSW has recorded 863 new locally acquired cases today, a rise on yesterday.
Aucklanders wishing to leave the city’s boundary to travel to other parts of the country – which have fewer restrictions – will be allowed to from midnight Tuesday, providing they are permanently relocating out of the city, have child-caring duties or are returning home.
Sadly, the state also recorded seven deaths.
Nearly 75% of eligible New Zealanders – those 12 years and older – have had one dose of the vaccine, while 42% are fully inoculated.
So we are on standby to hear the Covid update from NSW, which won’t feature the premier today.
Australia’s Department of Health is being grilled by Labor senator Kristina Keneally on a report released on Monday by the disability royal commission which criticised the vaccine rollout for the disability sector.
And we’ve switched over to federal health minister Greg Hunt, who is announcing that the TGA has approved home testing from 1 November.
Health department secretary Brendan Murphy has denied “deprioritising” the disability sector but says the focus of vaccine providers was turned to residential aged care because it was the area of “significantly greater risk”:
Hunt says this is obviously subject to individual tests being approved as “safe and effective” but the approval is “an important additional protection” for Australians.
But Murphy said he would not comment on the findings of the royal commission’s report as it was a draft report and the government was yet to be sent a copy.
How this will work and how the tests will be made available is still uncertain:
We’re expecting a more detailed update from Queensland health officials in about eight minutes.
Will Queensland have different restrictions for the unvaccinated moving forward? This is what Yvette D’Ath had to say:
So just on the confusion surrounding whether the additional Victorian case numbers were to be added on to previous days’ numbers or if they were being counted in today’s numbers, my colleague Josh Nicholas has cleared it up:
When will a decision be made on the NRL grand final? Jeannette Young says on the actual day (Sunday).
Melbourne’s Tullamarine Freeway looks a bit jammed up amid reports of drivers protesting:
Jeannette Young is asked how concerned she is about the situation in the state:
Annastacia Palaszczuk says restrictions (not a lockdown) for the Brisbane and Moreton Bay region will be announced by the chief health officer, Jeannette Young, later this morning. These will include measures at aged care centres, prisons and in disability settings:
So the Queensland premier had a short update there, saying that a more comprehensive update will come from health officials in around 40 minutes.
