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Australia Covid live news update: NSW records 863 cases, seven deaths; Victoria 867 cases, four deaths; Brisbane restrictions after four local cases Australia Covid live news update: NSW records 863 cases, seven deaths; Victoria 867 cases, four deaths; Byron and Tweed lockdown to end
(32 minutes later)
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We are also on standby for the covid update from Victoria, due in two minutes. Victorian Health Minister Martin Foley said the extra cases had been notified.
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. “That software problem has been rectified by our partners in the pathology contracting area, and this, fortunately, did not have an impact on either the people concerned getting the test results,” he said.
Here is what the health minister had to say: Health deputy secretary Kate Matson said more than 50 per cent of Tuesday cases are in the northern suburbs, including 270 in Hume, 125 in Whittlesea, 88 in Moreland, 43 in Karrabin, and 24 in Dunmore.
Hazzard has also revealed that lifesaving breast screening services run by BreastScreen NSW will resume soon. There are currently 375 people in hospital in Victoria being treated for COVID-19 and of those, 81 are in intensive care and 61 are on a ventilator.
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. The Australian Capital Territory has recorded 13 new locally acquired cases today:
Now for a graph, so you can see NSW’s gradual decline in case numbers in colour: Victoria has overtaken New South Wales in daily case numbers, recording its highest total since the beginning of the Covid pandemic.
Brad Hazzard has just confirmed some good news, in that the Byron Bay and Tweed areas will be lifted from lockdown tomorrow, as scheduled: On Tuesday Victoria recorded 867 new, locally acquired cases and four deaths.
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. A software malfunction at the weekend in Victoria meant 149 cases were not counted in the overall numbers.
Hunt: This included 140 cases that have now been added to Monday’s case numbers. The additional cases mean Victoria, which recorded 845 cases on Monday, surpassed NSW, which had 787, for the first time during this outbreak.
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: Brad Hazzard also confirmed at his presser that some regional areas could also be issued stay-at-home orders.
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. He has explained that essentially there is a bit of a crossover occurring, wherein some unvaccinated people in regional LGAs may be going into lockdown after 11 October, when the unvaccinated face restrictions across the state.
Some details on the deaths now from NSW health minister Brad Hazzard, who’s said that they included four women and three men. That would come after these areas have few restrictions, resulting in a backwards step for them.
One person was in their 40s, another in their 50s, two in their 70s, two in their 80s and on person in their 90s. Hazzard just puts it down to the pandemic itself:
Three of them were fully vaccinated, three had recieved one dose and one person was unvaccinated. NSW health minister Brad Hazzard and police commissioner Mick Fuller appear to be at odds over who will be enforcing public health orders restricting access to businesses and venues for unvaccinated residents. NSW is preparing to make a series of public health orders imposing continued restrictions for unvaccinated Australians, though it has signalled they will largely be eased from 1 December.
NSW has recorded 863 new locally acquired cases today, a rise on yesterday. The plan has raised the prospect of business and venue owners enforcing restricted entry on unvaccinated patrons. Earlier Fuller said his officers won’t be checking the vaccination status of those out in public from 11 October. But Hazzard has just contradicted that position. Hazzard said he had not seen Fuller’s comments but said breaching a public health order is a crime, making police responsible for enforcement:
Sadly, the state also recorded seven deaths. Hazzard said it was not proposed that business owners would be fined if they allowed unvaccinated people into their premises. When asked why a business owner would bother having a fight with an unvaccinated customer if they would face no punishment, he said the media was “obsessing” over “minutiae”.
So we are on standby to hear the Covid update from NSW, which won’t feature the premier today. On that note, Brad Hazzard is asked about regional areas where access to the vaccine has not been as good as many areas in metropolitan Sydney, and he said he had some “sympathy” for the view:
And we’ve switched over to federal health minister Greg Hunt, who is announcing that the TGA has approved home testing from 1 November. Brad Hazzard is asked again about what he thinks of the commentary surrounding the freedoms unvaccinated people will have in NSW in December, and he gave a typically Hazzardesque answer:
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. We are also on standby for the Covid update from Victoria, due in two minutes.
How this will work and how the tests will be made available is still uncertain: Brad Hazzard is asked about hospitals and the rising number of people being infected at them:
Will Queensland have different restrictions for the unvaccinated moving forward? This is what Yvette D’Ath had to say: Brad 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? Jeannette Young says on the actual day (Sunday). Services were cut back due to the Delta outbreak but BreastScreen NSW director Sarah McGill said they would on a case-by-case basis, based on an assessment of risk:
Jeannette Young is asked how concerned she is about the situation in the state: