The world has just passed another pandemic milestone with more than 6 million cases confirmed, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
More than 368,000 people have so far died from the virus around the world.
Working from home during the pandemic has meant dogs across Australia have had company all day, every day.
But now, as many face the prospect of returning to the office, dog owners have a heartbreaking task on their hands: break the news to little Fido.
Animal behaviourist Dr Kate Mornement, of Pets Behaving Badly, says many pets will have grown used to the perks of having their owners at home – more attention, more treats, more walks. She says the return to work will be a "big change" for many pets which can cause stress and anxiety.
"Sudden changes to the normal routine, like going back to work after working from home for a month, are a common cause of separation anxiety," Mornement says.
Deputy Lifestyle Editor Sophie Aubrey speaks with Dr Mornement about how to prepare your dog for your return to work.
You can read the full story here.
Industrial Relations Minister Christian Porter says the economic spoils of 29 years of uninterrupted economic growth are gone because of the coronavirus, with unions and businesses now needing to work out how to create jobs in the wake of the global pandemic.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison last week announced a plan to get unions and businesses together to come up with an ambitious plan to streamline industrial awards and enterprise bargaining agreements in a bid to lift the economy out of the COVID-19 crisis.
Attorney-General and Minister for Industrial Relations Christian Porter says unions and businesses must work together. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
Mr Porter on Sunday morning confirmed two of the most pressing issues would be criminalising wage theft and coming up with a plan to introduce lifetime agreements for large greenfield projects.
He said it had always been a good idea to get unions and businesses around the table but before the coronavirus it was “just hard to achieve”.
“We've been in extraordinary circumstances and the challenges that we face to grow our way out of the economic damage the pandemic has caused are just colossal,” Mr Porter told the ABC’s Insiders program on Sunday morning.
“So there's a coalescence of interests for the first time in a long time. We all thought it was a good idea.
You can book and you can invite, but the willingness of all of the parties - this isn't a criticism of unions or business - all of the parties have in effect been arguing for many years around pretty considerable spoils of 29 years of uninterrupted growth, and in whole industry sectors those spoils are gone.”
Opposition treasury spokesman Jim Chalmers said Labor wanted the process to work, but there was “deep scepticism in the community about what the prime minister is now talking about”.
“These are the same characters who for seven years have been dividing the community,” Mr Chalmers told Sky News.
“They have been demonising people on social security payments, they have been trying to diminish the role of unions, they have been cutting penalty rates, they’re responsible for stagnant wages and insecure work.”
Stamping out COVID-19 is within Australia's sights as the growth of new cases slows to a trickle, but a leading infectious disease expert says it will take at least a year of living with restrictions before the coronavirus could be declared eliminated, reports Dana McCauley.
Professor Raina MacIntyre from the University of NSW Kirby Institute said that although the number of confirmed cases in Australia was now low, the key to eliminating COVID-19 was in stamping out community transmission, where the virus spreads without a known source.
"Elimination means not having sustained domestic transmission," Professor MacIntyre said.
"Australia can achieve this, but it would require a demonstration of a sustained period of low disease incidence - probably a year or more."
In that time, she said, authorities would need to maintain high levels of testing and contact tracing, keep international borders closed, continue with social distancing and potentially introduce "universal face mask use".
You can read Dana's full report here.
Since March, Australia's ambassador in the Philippines Steve Robinson and his team have facilitated the return of 2309 Australian citizens and permanent residents on eight international flights.
Onboard one of those flights was three-year-old Lukas McNeill. He had been taken to the Philippines by his father, Ian, to attend a wedding in February and was to be brought back by his grandfather in early April.
Because of the country's unique geography with 2000 inhabited islands, Mr Robinson's team arranged 29 "sweeper flights" across the three missions to retrieve people from far-flung locations. It took some people 18 hours just to reach a regional airport to board one of these sweeper flights.
The first flights departed Manila on April 18 with Mr Robinson's 200 embassy staff working past midnight to get the planes in the air. Ten days later, they did it all again before a third mission on Tuesday this week.
Globally, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) has provided direct assistance to help about 22,000 people reach Australian shores, including 6500 cruise passengers. It estimates more than 300,000 have returned home in total since Prime Minister Scott Morrison sounded the alarm.
You can read Josh Dye's full story here.
Labor’s treasury spokesman Jim Chalmers says the Morrison government needs to release a major new housing package to save residential construction in Australia.
Sky News reported on Sunday morning the federal government will unveil a new homeowner grant in a bid to avoid a drop of up to 50 per cent in residential construction because of the coronavirus pandemic. According to the report, the grant won’t just be given to first home buyers and will be available across the board.
Shadow Treasurer Jim Chalmers. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
Mr Chalmers said Labor supported grants but there also needed to be support for tradies, social housing, a program to try to house essential workers closer to their work and a lifting of the cap on the loan deposit scheme.
“Let’s see what they announce during the week… but [Labor leader] Anthony Albanese and [Opposition housing spokesman] Jason Clare have been saying for more than a month now that residential construction has the capacity to play a really important role in this recovery,” Mr Chalmers told Sky News.
“Already before the crisis construction was relatively weak and homeownership was at 60-year lows, so we had a challenge there, that challenge has been exacerbated obviously by this coronavirus crisis. In two or three months we are very worried construction will fall off a cliff.”
The high country town of Bright in Victoria is getting ready for people to return from Monday, after five months of quiet, which began with the Black Summer bushfires in January.
Accommodation providers say the phones never ran so hot as they did last week in the hours after Premier Daniel Andrews announced that Victorians could soon venture to the regions for overnight stays.
Bright is cautiously optimistic about Monday's reopening to overnight tourists.Credit:Joe Armao
Locals are generally grateful and optimistic, if not desperate, but some also fear tourists will bring more than dollars to a town so far untouched by COVID-19 cases.
People are uncertain how restaurants and pubs will manage the 20-person limits and strict hygiene requirements. Or how in the weeks and months ahead, managers will find the workers to serve, cook and wash dishes - jobs normally done by visitors on working holiday visas.
With the ski season beginning on June 22, people ask if the nearby resorts can manage social-distancing in a way that will ensure families and groups still want to come in sustainable numbers
You can read Zach Hope's full story here.
Health experts in the US are worried the massive protests sweeping across US cities since the death of black man George Floyd could lead to a new surge in COVID-19 cases.
Some leaders appealed for calm in places where crowds smashed storefronts and destroyed police cars in recent nights have handed out masks and warned demonstrators they were putting themselves at risk.
Minnesota's governor Tim Walz said on Saturday that too many protesters weren't socially distancing or wearing masks after heeding the call earlier in the week. But many seemed undeterred.
"It's not OK that in the middle of a pandemic we have to be out here risking our lives," Spence Ingram said Friday after marching with other protesters to the state Capitol in Atlanta. "But I have to protest for my life and fight for my life all the time."
Ingram, 25, who was wearing a mask, said she has asthma and was worried about contracting the virus. But she said as a black woman, she always felt that her life was under threat from police and she needed to protest that.
The demonstrations over the killing of George Floyd, a black man who died after a Minneapolis officer pressed a knee into his neck, are coming at a time when many cities were beginning to relax stay-at-home orders.
"Whether they're fired up or not that doesn't prevent them from getting the virus," said Bradley Pollock, chairman of the Department of Public Health Sciences at the University of California, Davis.
Even for the many protesters who have been wearing masks, those don't guarantee protection from the coronavirus. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends cloth masks because they can make it more difficult for infected people to spread the virus - but they are not designed to protect the person wearing the mask from getting it.
The US has been worst hit by the coronavirus outbreak, with more than 1.7 million cases and over 103,000 deaths, according to a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University.
AAP
The coronavirus pandemic has taken a huge toll on sleep, with nearly half of respondents to a global study by Australian experts reporting poor sleep and two in five waking frequently in the night.
The study, which had more than 2000 people responses, will show 46 per cent are sleeping poorly during the pandemic, compared with 25 per cent before it, and 41 per cent are waking during the night three or more times a week, a symptom of insomnia.
The coronavirus pandemic has taken a huge toll on sleep.Credit:iStock
Melinda Jackson of the Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health at Monash University said the causes of sleep disruption included pandemic stress, anxiety, job changes and financial distress.
Heavier alcohol consumption was a factor for 39 per cent of those whose sleep was worse, and increased phone usage was also a cause, she said. Some people could develop insomnia that lasted beyond the pandemic.
But the Monash study, which will be published later this year, will also show 42 per cent of those whose sleep was bad before the pandemic had found it improved because they could sleep and work in a routine that suited their body better.
The Andrews government is asking large employers to stagger start times for workers and will consider adding extra public transport services as part of a strategy to avoid overcrowding on trams, trains and buses, reports Zach Hope.
Conversations have already begun between government agencies and major CBD employers that may lead to increased shiftwork and workers being asked to continue working from home on certain days.
While part of a broader push to keep Victorians safe from the coronavirus threat, the willingness of workplaces to change business-as-normal processes will form a crucial plank of the post-restrictions public transport strategy.
Jeroen Weimar, the departmental lead on the state's coronavirus transport strategy, said the insides of trams or trains would not undergo any structural changes as part of the plan.
He ruled out mandatory masks on public transport or using commuter data, such as Myki, for the purposes of contact tracing.
And he said that while teams would regularly clean surfaces and help commuters, there would no enforcement of social distancing.
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2020-05-31 00:42:00Z
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