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Day in review
And that's another day finished. Thanks for reading along.
Let's take a look back at the major stories of the day:
- Victoria recorded 149 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday and 24 deaths overnight. Premier Daniel Andrews said the average time it took to receive COVID-19 test results in Victoria was now less than a day.
- Six new coronavirus cases have been confirmed in NSW, one of them a trainee bus driver. Hundreds of people in quarantine have been moved out of the Travelodge Hotel in Sydney after the facility was deemed not up to standard.
- Queensland recorded one new coronavirus case after 20,000 people were tested on Tuesday. The Palaszczuk government has launched a criminal investigation into a Melbourne millionaire and his family after the quarantine exemption for the family's super-yacht Lady Pamela was revoked.
- More than 600 staff are in isolation after a major outbreak at Frankston Hospital in Victoria. Meanwhile, three more hospitals and two more aged care facilities in Victoria recorded new cases.
- Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Shane Patton has revealed criminal inquiries are under way into security companies engaged for the botched hotel quarantine program.
This is Rachael Dexter signing off.
As always, if you appreciate our COVID-19 coverage and are an avid reader of the blog, please consider taking out a subscription to The Age or The Sydney Morning Herald to support what we do.
Stay safe, look after one another and goodnight.
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EXCLUSIVE: Tony Abbott granted travel exemption to take on UK Brexit job
By Latika Bourke
London: Former prime minister Tony Abbott has been granted an exemption from the Australian government's international travel ban to fly to London where he has accepted a job spruiking British trade after Brexit.
Abbott has been appointed by Trade Secretary Liz Truss to the UK Trade Board.
The pair had breakfast in London together on Wednesday but neither released a photograph or statement acknowledging their get together.
Former Australian PM Tony Abbott pictured a few days ago with French golfer Romain Langasque at the Wales Open.Credit:Getty Images
The UK Government has not released any official statement. Mr Abbott is advising the UK Trade Board and spruiking British trade after Brexit. It is unclear if his role is paid or unpaid.
Mr Abbott is in Italy and will return to London for a speech he is giving to next week to The Policy Exchange think tank, which is chaired by former foreign minister now High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, Alexander Downer.
Mr Abbott will speak about the international response to the coronavirus pandemic.
He did not respond to questions from The Age and Sydney Morning Herald about the nature of his travel and why it warranted an exemption.
The Australian government has banned citizens from leaving the country and effectively locked out thousands of Australians trying to return home by imposing caps on the number of people who can return home in a single day and week.
14,000 sign plea for singles in locked down Victoria
By Rachael Dexter
Nearly 14,000 people have called for the Victorian government to amend lockdown measures to allow single people living alone to have a nominated friend to visit them.
Melbourne woman Dr Gen Ford has been working from home alone for almost six months, and started the online petition a week ago.
Those with "intimate partners" are allowed to travel to visit their significant others during stage four lock down, but there is no provision for those living alone without a romantic partner to have any visitors.
"People in relationships have definitely been preferential treatment here," she said.
Dr Ford, who said she overall supported Premier Daniel Andrews and his handling of the pandemic, said she had written to MPs from a number of other parties and had received support for her campaign.
"It seems to be quite bipartisan which I'm happy about, I don't want this to be seen as an anti-government thing," she said.
Earlier this month The Age reported that another Melburnian was pushing for a New Zealand style "bubble" scheme for singles.
Even at the height of New Zealand’s lockdown, which in some ways was harsher than Melbourne’s stage four restrictions, people who lived alone were allowed to visit or stay at another residence under a so-called "shared bubble" arrangement.
"Specifically, if you live alone and have already established a bubble with another household, this can be maintained so long as both households have no contact with others – that they stay in their joint bubble," the New Zealand Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said in April.
Dr Ford said she hoped the Victorian Premier and Chief Health Officer might consider a "more equitable" stage three for singles once the state moves out of stage four restrictions in three weeks time.
"Explicitly allowing people living alone to visit each other would make a profound difference to our experience of this pandemic," she said.
"I just think that one cup of tea with a friend would be the thing that stop someone tipping over the edge."
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ICYMI: No offer to 'put ADF resources into hotels': Emergency Commissioner
By Sumeyya Ilanbey
Recapping one of the main stories out of Victoria today: The Australian Defence Force did not offer to "put resources into hotels" to quarantine returned travellers in Victoria, the state's Emergency Management Commissioner Andrew Crisp has insisted.
Mr Crisp told a state parliamentary inquiry this morning that Defence support to the state in late March was limited to planning hotel quarantine, adding he did not seek extra military assistance because private security personnel had already been hired to guard hotels.
Emergency Management Commissioner Andrew Crisp maintains his stance on an offer of quarantine help from the ADF.Credit:Getty Images
Mr Crisp was questioned at the parliamentary public accounts and estimates committee about his role in the botched quarantine scheme, which triggered a new wave of coronavirus cases.
Speaking publicly for the first time since the early days of the pandemic, Mr Crisp was grilled by Coalition MPs Richard Riordan, Danny O'Brien and Bridget Vallence about Victoria's decisions on ADF support.
Mr Crisp repeatedly said that the Defence Force did not offer to guard hotels, and of Prime Minister Scott Morrison's statement on March 27 that ADF support would be made available, he said he "took that to be in very broad terms".
"There was no offer made by the ADF in relation to putting resources into the hotels for hotel quarantine," Mr Crisp told the inquiry.
"When this pandemic first began, we were very clear in terms of wanting the ADF to come into the State Control Centre to support us around our planning and logistics, which is exactly what they did with Operation Soteria," Mr Crisp said.
"With the meetings on the 27th and 28th of March, when we were standing up Operation Soteria, there was not an offer from the ADF in relation to support for hotel quarantine, and nor did I request that support."
The role of the ADF has become a point of political tension between the Commonwealth and Victoria after Premier Daniel Andrews told the parliamentary committee two weeks ago: "I don't believe ADF support was on offer".
Opinion: Where does Australia's international travel ban end?
This comment piece from Ben Groundwater has been one of our best-read pieces today:
Here's a question for you: where does this end? The travel restrictions, the lockdowns, the border closures, the separation of families and friends. Where does it end?
It's hard to know, in some ways, exactly what Australia is aiming for. What's the goal? What's the end point? What do we have to do or see to begin working our way towards a new normal that includes travel?
Or, is this the new normal? Because if it is, I don't like it.
Airports have grown quiet.Credit:Getty
Cast your eye, again, to Europe. Consider your friends and family members in places like the UK, Germany, Italy and France who are allowed to travel right now, today, who can fly and catch trains and cross borders and have holidays and see relatives with few restrictions placed on them.
Some might have to self-quarantine on return, depending on their destination, and some might not. Most will have to socially distance themselves from others. Plenty will have to wear masks and take other precautions. That looks like a tentative "new normal", a way to function as a society while attempting to manage a global pandemic.
And now come back to Australia. State borders here are closed. International borders are closed. Australians aren't allowed out of the country unless permission is granted by Border Force. We're not even allowed interstate. And Australians based overseas aren't allowed back into their homeland unless they fit under the daily cap and can find an airfare that's lower than the price of a home mortgage.
I wrote last week about the international travel ban that Australians have been hit with, and my acceptance of the necessity of that. But since then I have been hit with an avalanche of emails from people in all sorts of situations, those with family overseas they would like to see, those with girlfriends or boyfriends or fiancées or other partners overseas – and plenty with loved ones who just live in another state in Australia. We don't just travel for pleasure, these people are saying, we travel for business, for duty, and for love.
And to those readers I say – yes, you have a point. A really good point.
So, what's going on here? We flattened the curve in Australia when we were called to do it. We bought ourselves time. When COVID-19 struck we banded together as a society to keep case numbers low and give everyone a fair chance. But now what are we doing?
All in this together? How rich and poor are travelling in lockdown
By Ben Schneiders and Liam Mannix
When Premier Daniel Andrews announced stage-four lockdowns he said one of its most important aims was to reduce people's mobility, otherwise "we'll continue to see big transmission numbers coming out of too many people moving too often, going to work".
More than three weeks in, as with many other aspects of this disease, stage four restrictions on mobility are working much better for people in wealthier suburbs than those in poorer ones, where the COVID-19 pandemic has hit hardest.
New case data analysed by The Age shows that after the stage three lockdown was announced, there was a flattening of the rate of new cases in Melbourne’s wealthier local government areas, while infection numbers continued to rise in the city’s most disadvantaged areas.
It is only in the past week – now in stage four – that those numbers have started to come down sharply. The team of epidemiologists who supply COVID-19 modelling to the federal government suspect a link between disadvantage, virus spread and the need to travel to work.
"The logic makes sense," says Associate Professor Nick Golding, head of the team advising the government and an epidemic modeller at Curtin University. "Lockdown measures target contacts that can be avoided by people working from home, and non-household contacts. If the majority of a person's contacts are in the household or in a job that can't be done remotely, then a lockdown would be expected to have less effect on their transmission potential."
Melbourne researchers work on rapid test to show COVID immunity
By Liam Mannix
Melbourne’s Burnet Institute is working on a quick test that could reveal if you have been infected with and cleared of COVID-19, potentially allowing people to return to work.
The project is headed by Associate Professor David Anderson, who led a similar effort to develop a finger-prick blood test to monitor immune cells in patients with HIV.
The institute declined to comment on Wednesday, but The Age understands a major announcement is in the works, potentially within the next month.
The state government has invested $1 million in the project as part of $14.7 million invested across 17 research programs.
But similar tests have run into controversy. The Age revealed in May that the federal government spent almost $10 million on 500,000 antibody tests that independent research showed were too inaccurate to diagnose COVID-19.
An accurate test would be crucial for the healthcare sector, allowing doctors and nurses with immunity to avoid isolating after coming into contact with people with COVID-19.
Update: 44 active cases at Frankston Hospital
By Melissa Cunningham
In a statement just released Peninsula Health said 618 healthcare workers remain in isolation following a coronavirus outbreak at Frankston Hospital.
"We currently have 44 active COVID-19 positive staff members," Peninsula Health chief executive Felicity Topp said.
"The safety and well-being of our staff, our patients and our community is our utmost priority and we are doing all we can to help slow the spread of this virus."
There have been 58 infections linked to the outbreak so far, Victorian department of health data shows.
Hospital staff earlier told The Age about 700 workers were in isolation over the last few days as a precaution.
Ms Topp said following the hospital outbreak Peninsula Health had been working with a team of experienced infection prevention experts to review and strengthen COVID-19 practices.
"We have further strengthened our infection prevention measures, including the extension of our contact tracing of both staff and patients," Ms Topp said. "As such, we are casting a very wide net on our contact tracing process resulting in the furloughing of 618 staff across the service."
Melbourne Central station at peak hour in stage four
By Rachael Dexter
Something small to break up all the news today - a bit of footage of one of Melbourne's once-busiest train stations.
Nine News reporter Andrew Lund captured an eerily empty Melbourne Central station on his way home this evening.
Africa is free of wild polio and Congo says measles epidemic is over
By Kate Bartlett
Staying oversees - with a bit of good virus news...
As the world eagerly awaits a coronavirus vaccine, Africa has received some good news, with wild polio now eradicated and the Democratic Republic of Congo ending the world's largest measles outbreak.
Polio is a highly contagious disease that is generally passed through the fecal-oral route, or sometimes through contaminated food and water. It affects mainly children under the age of 5 and can cause paralysis.
A baby receives a polio vaccine at the Medina Maternal Child Health Centre in Mogadishu, Somalia.Credit:AP
"The ARCC (African Regional Commission for the Certification of the Eradication of Poliomyelitis) certifies that the African region has interrupted the transmission of indigenous wild polio virus," announced the independent body's chairperson, Rose Leke.
Leke, who was among WHO representatives, heads of state and philanthropists who spoke via video conference to mark the announcement, called it a "historic public health achievement".
Wild polio cases have decreased by 99.9 per cent since vaccination programs were widely introduced in 1988, but until recently Nigeria, the Central African Republic, South Sudan and Cameroon still had pockets of infection.
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2020-08-26 11:57:00Z
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