Latest updates
NSW and Victoria COVID press conferences ahead this morning
By Ashleigh McMillan
We've just be given details of when New South Wales and Victoria will be providing their updates on the COVID-19 pandemic today.
First cab off the rank is Victoria. Jacinta Allan, the Minister for the Coordination of Transport - COVID-19, will give a coronavirus update at 10:15am AEDT. We understand neither the Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton nor his deputy CHO Allen Cheng will be joining her this morning.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant will speak to the media at 11am.
You'll be able to watch both updates streamed live right here on the blog.
Kelly did 'celebratory jig' at national doughnut – but virus fight isn't over yet
By Mary Ward
Acting Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly says he did a "celebratory jig" upon learning Australia had recorded no new local coronavirus cases on Sunday, but the country's top doctor warns complacency will be a major issue for the nation going forward.
"We haven't beaten it yet – I must admit the national donut, as we call it, made me do a celebratory jig yesterday," Professor Kelly told Fran Kelly on RN Breakfast.
Acting Chief Medical Officer Professor Paul Kelly.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
"But it's a short-term thing".
He said Australia must "keep our eye on the ball" as risks of infection continue from overseas arrivals in hotel quarantine and other places of entry such as freight workers.
"The Jane Halton review shows that quarantine standards and excellent, but it's still a risk," he said.
"We had zero community transmissions cases, but there was and continues to be a rise in cases coming into our quarantine hotels. Four jurisdictions have had increasing numbers of cases coming in from overseas."
Professor Kelly said Chief Scientist Dr Alan Finkel would be presenting on state contact tracing systems to national cabinet Friday week.
Asked about state borders, Professor Kelly resisted being drawn to political commentary, saying: "Internal borders are really a matter for the states."
However, he said he did believe "we're in a very good space now, and we've been saying for some time that we should be opening up", noting that all states with border closures had shown some signs of relaxing restrictions in the past few weeks.
As for international borders, Professor Kelly said health authorities were looking at where to next form travel bubbles. He said the countries on their radar were "no surprises if you look at the global figures", flagging Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and nearby Pacific island nations as possibilities.
Trend suggests more Australian men now losing jobs than women
Men are suffering a bigger blow than women to their job prospects as the pandemic imposes sweeping layoffs nationwide, sparking a rethink about the “pink recession” seen in the first phase of the crisis.
Chief political correspondent David Crowe says the trend suggests Victoria has broken from other states in the way the pandemic has taken its toll on jobs, making it the only place where unemployment is worse for women than men.
With male unemployment reaching deeper levels in NSW and Queensland, the trend is fuelling a debate over federal measures to save blue-collar jobs in a prolonged downturn.
Official figures show unemployment reached 7.6 per cent for women in Victoria in September compared to 5.9 per cent for men, reflecting a bigger increase for women since March.
The Age revealed on Sunday that Victorian women had fallen further behind men in the jobs market than at any time since the beginning of the economic crisis.
The trend in NSW has seen male unemployment reach 7.8 per cent, up 2.5 percentage points since March, while female unemployment reached 6.5 per cent, up 2.1 percentage points over the same period.
Opera House reopens to audiences
By Mary Ward
There was a return to normality at the Sydney Opera House over the weekend, as audiences returned to their seats for the venue's reopening for live events.
On Sunday, a tribute to the life of jazz legend Don Burrows kicked things off, with a socially distanced audience enjoying a one-off performance at the Joan Sutherland Theatre hosted by Ray Martin.
The season will begin in earnest tonight with the Sydney Theatre Company's Rules for Living, which will play at the Drama Theatre until December 19.
Tours of the venue will recommence on Thursday.
NSW Premier's department awarded COVID-19 contract without tender
By Alexandra Smith
The consulting group won the contract a day after writing to the department's secretary Tim Reardon. The group's April 20 letter said "committing effort now to develop ways to restart and rebuild the economy, whilst balancing health and societal needs, is going to be imperative".
Details of the contract, released to NSW Labor under freedom of information laws, reveal the consultants did not accept the "capped rates, capped expenses, or agreed scheme discounts" which would usually prompt the requirement for two other quotes.
Instead, the department's legal team "drafted the contract to meet the requirements of the emergency procurement" of the consultants.
'A real shift': Women the big winners as work comes home
As part of the The Age's 'Melbourne after COVID' series, journalists Bianca Hall and Royce Millar write there's increasing evidence Australia’s working from home experiment has benefited one group in particular: women living in the outer suburbs.
IT specialist Mohini Karki says she has never been happier.Credit:Simon Schluter
On a good day, IT specialist Mohini Karki spent 90 minutes battling public transport from her Cranbourne East home into the CBD. If her train was cancelled and replaced with a bus, it could take as long as 3½ hours.
These days, Ms Karki’s office is a spare room in her outer-suburban home. With fast internet and a comfortable house, she is finding the balance between her busy job and home life a dream.
“There is no mental stress that you have to pick up the kids or look at the weather or the train delays and timetables,” she says. “That is a real, real shift.”
According to the National Growth Areas Alliance, which represents outer-suburban councils, allowing staff to continue to work from home – at least some of the time – could boost productivity, bolster women’s participation in the workforce, and improve family time.
One in five Australians live in growth areas, which are dominated by young families attracted by affordable housing. But they are also places that come with long commutes to jobs hubs: the outer suburbs account for 58 per cent of population growth but only 34 per cent of jobs.
'Different governments have achieved it different ways': Australia congratulated on day without local cases
By Mary Ward
An immunisation expert has said Australia should congratulate itself for achieving a day without new local cases – even though we know that run will end today.
On Sunday, although NSW Health flagged they had detected a new case after the reporting cut-off, all states and territories recorded no new local cases during their 24-hour reporting period.
The last time the stat was recorded was June 9, before Victoria's second wave.
"It's absolutely fantastic, it's something to be proud of – different governments have achieved it in different ways, but we have to congratulate them," Professor Robert Booy, immunisation expert at University of Sydney, told Ben Fordham on 2GB.
Professor Booy said the achievement was particularly impressive as Europe and US recorded new daily case highs.
"If we had the same rate of disease, we would be having thousands of cases every day," he said, advocating for a reopening of the economy with strong contact tracing and social distancing.
"We've got to find that sweet spot."
One in five homes for people with disabilities lack COVID-19 safety plans
By Melissa Cunningham
Hundreds of Victorian disability homes are still without COVID safety plans, fuelling concerns outbreaks in the sector could quickly escalate into soaring numbers of coronavirus cases, in a repeat of the aged care crisis.
Health reporter Melissa Cunningham says a survey conducted by the Health and Community Services Union of more than 900 Victorian disability workers found more than one in five of the state's estimated 1400 disability homes are yet to enact COVID-safe plans.
Staff at more than 20 Victorian homes reported in a recent audit that they still did not have access to personal protective equipment such as masks. Ninety-five per cent of disability workers also voiced distress and anxiety about their working conditions.
The union has also sounded the alarm on a mental health epidemic among disability workers, after three suicides among Victorian disability workers in the past six months. All were women, including two aged in their 20s.
"It's frightening," the union's state secretary Paul Healey said. "This has never occurred in such a short space of time before and we are really concerned about the mental health stresses and the wellbeing of workers due to the pandemic."
United States coronavirus cases rise in grim march to Election Day
Washington: Coronavirus cases continued their grim climb in the United States on Sunday, local time, with Midwestern states experiencing record hospitalisations, as increasingly bitter rhetoric kept the virus front and centre of campaigning two days before the presidential election.
US President Donald Trump.Credit:AP
Nearly 87,000 cases were reported on Saturday, with 909 deaths and record hospitalisations for the sixth straight day in the Midwest, according to a Reuters tally. In October, 31 states set records for increases in new cases, 21 for hospitalised COVID-19 patients and 14 for record increases in deaths.
President Donald Trump, the Republican seeking re-election against Democratic challenger Joe Biden on Tuesday, downplays the virus and has accused Democrats of overblowing the pandemic that has killed more 230,000 Americans, more than any other country.
Biden and fellow Democrats have hammered Trump as a poor leader who failed to contain COVID-19 in the United States, which also leads the world in the daily average number of new cases.
Trump's false accusation Friday that doctors were profiting from COVID-19 deaths drew harsh criticism from the governor of the election battleground state of Wisconsin.
"We have a president that believes that the doctors are at fault, they're messing with the numbers and he believes that it's over. It ain't over," Democratic Governor Tony Evers told CNN's State of the Union on Sunday.
"We have hospitalisations going through the roof," he said. "We absolutely need somebody that understands that this is an issue, it's a thing. People are dying."
Biden campaign adviser Anita Dunn defended doctors against Trump's attack, saying many hospital workers did not have adequate protective gear for a long time.
"These people have been risking their lives since the beginning of this crisis," she said on ABC's This Week.
Reuters
Good morning and welcome to the COVID-19 blog
Hi there and welcome to our live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic for Monday November 2.
I'm Ashleigh McMillan and I'll be with you on the blog until mid-afternoon. Feel free to get in touch via email or on Twitter.
Australia's fight against COVID-19 chalked up a major win yesterday, with zero cases of local transmission recorded across the country.
But while Health Minister Greg Hunt said the country was 'on track' to have all internal borders open by Christmas, newly re-elected Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk stood firm on keeping Sydney and Victorian residents out of Queensland until at least December 1.
More than 1.2 million people have now died from the virus across the world.
Stay with us for rolling coverage of COVID-19 news throughout the day.
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2020-11-01 19:58:00Z
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