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We’ve been out covering anti-lockdown protests across the city today.
The first - a small businesses rally - kicked off shortly after 11am outside Flinders Street Station. Photographer Chris Hopkins said about two dozen people were there when things became heated with police.
People were arrested at a small business anti-lockdown protest outside Flinders Street Station on Saturday.Credit:Chris Hopkins
An anti-vaccination protestor is arrested outside Flinders Street Station after hijacking a small business owners protest. Credit:Chris Hopkins
Officers arrested and questioned about a dozen people who weren’t wearing face masks following repeated warnings, but it appeared as though a number of anti-vaccination protesters had hijacked the small business small protest, he said.
Reporter Ashleigh McMillan was at the second protest outside vaccination hubs which began about noon.
There, the anti-vaccination protest slated for one of Victoria’s biggest vaccination hubs appeared to fizzle.
At midday, few protesters had corralled at the Royal Exhibition Building, while hundreds of people lined up to get an inoculation.
One maskless man who told police he was “just minding his own business” and had a exemption was detained by police while they confirmed a name and address.
There was also a strong police presence at the hub, with groups of officers and mounted police patrolling around the building and a police helicopter circling overhead from midday.
Protesters were also expected at the drive-through vaccination sites in the Melbourne Showgrounds and Sandown Racecourse in the city’s south-east.
The AFL has fined Adelaide $50,000 for breaching the league’s COVID-19 protocols after a number of players and club officials did not wear face masks during a commercial flight from Sydney to Adelaide last weekend.
In a statement on Saturday, the league’s general counsel Andrew Dillon said there was simply no excuse for the breach. The entirety of the fine will be included the club’s football department soft cap.
AFL general counsel Andrew Dillon.Credit:Jason South
“First and foremost, we all have a very clear responsibility to ensure we do everything we can to best protect the health and well-being of our family, friends and everyone in the community,” Dillon said.
“The rule here is clear and has been in place for some time and there is simply no excuse for not abiding by it.
“We will not compromise the health and well-being of the community, and remind everyone in the industry – players, coaches, officials and staff - that they have a responsibility to adhere to the rules for the safety of everyone.“
Crows chief executive officer Tim Silvers said that “from top to bottom [the club] owns this error in judgement”.
He also apologised to the other people who shared the flight with the team.
The Singapore Formula One Grand Prix has been cancelled for the second year in a row due to the COVID-19 pandemic, race organisers said in a statement on Friday.
The BBC and Sky television had earlier reported the October 1 to 3 night race at the Marina Bay circuit was off due to immigration restrictions.
“To cancel the event for a second year is an incredibly difficult decision, but a necessary one in light of the prevailing restrictions for live events in Singapore,” Colin Syn, deputy chairman of the Singapore Grand Prix said.
“We would not be able to deliver a full event experience fans have come to expect over the years, while safeguarding the health and safety of our fans, contractors, volunteers and staff.”
Red Bull Racing driver Daniel Ricciardo at the Singapore Formula One Grand Prix on the Marina Bay City Circuit in Singapore in 2014.Credit:Ng Han Guan
The race attracts tens of thousands of fans from around the world with concerts and other entertainment around the sidelines.
Tickets for this year’s race had yet to go on sale.
Singapore follows Canada off the calendar and is unlikely to be the last to fall victim of the pandemic with Japan, Brazil, Mexico and Australia all looking uncertain from the original list of 23 rounds.
Australia has already been rescheduled to November but travel to Australia is heavily restricted.
A Formula One spokesman said the sport had alternatives to fill the gap.
“We continue to work with all promoters during this fluid time and have plenty of options to adapt if needed,” he said.
Turkey, which had been due to replace Canada but was then also scrapped, would be a possible stand-in with talk also of China making a return and a second potential race in the United States.
via Reuters
The daily coronavirus press conference finished shortly before 12.30pm.
Here are the main points:
- Five new cases recorded
- Of those new cases, one is a construction worker
- Three of the five new cases are primary close contacts of an existing case
- Paramedics will be given the green light to join priority vaccination queues from Wednesday
- The vaccination blitz for aged care and disability workers will be extended a further day
- Craigieburn and Epping Plaza shopping centres in the spotlight for potential spread with positive cases frequent shoppers
- Doherty Institute chief says new Delta strain may have leaked out of an Australian hotel quarantine facility
You might remember at yesterday’s press conference Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the government would establish a digital link to Medicare accounts when people had been vaccinated, partly to allow free travel between states.
Asked about this, Health Minister Martin Foley gave a cool response saying any change to rules around borders would be based on health advice and that current vaccination levels were “nowhere near” the numbers required to allow that.
Health Martin Foley speaks during a press conference on June 5.Credit:Asanka Ratnayake
Pressed on whether fully vaccinated people would be allowed greater freedom of movement, Mr Foley said: “It’s too early to say, we will take the public health advice. And clearly, we can’t keep chugging along at low rates of vaccinations and expect things to change.
“The goal to that kind of conversation being successful is high rates of vaccinations, and we are still some way away from that, the sooner we get to the highest level of vaccinations we possibly can is the sooner we have all of those kinds of conversations about ... greater movement, greater economic return, returning international visitors, Australians being allowed to visit internationally.
“All of these pathways out of this pandemic are predicated on higher levels of vaccination. At the moment, I think it’s between 2 and 3 per cent of us are fully vaccinated.”
We are hopping around a little bit at the podium. Professor Lewin has come back to answer two important questions about the Delta variant flare-up.
If it’s a hotel quarantine breach, will that have occurred in Victoria or somewhere else?
Professor Lewin said that could not be known as opposed to the Kappa cluster which had a “clear match” with South Australian quarantine.
Matt Golding Saturday cartoons Credit:Matt Golding
Could the Delta variant be on the loose somewhere else in the country undetected?
“That is actually really unlikely because ... about 20 per cent of people will get severe symptoms and of them, some will require hospitalisation,” she said.
“It would be really unlikely it could be circulating for an extended period of time without it being admitted into hospitals.”
There’s been some discussion also about the quarantining arrangements for diplomats.
Our reporter Paul Sakkal asked how those people are handled in terms of quarantine and testing.
Professor Brett Sutton said rules for those people were a commonwealth responsibility.
“To the extent that we can enforce it, we recommend testing as we would for anyone early in their quarantine phase, and right at the end of the quarantine phase before they release from quarantine,” he said.
COVID-19 logistics chief Jeroen Weimar has give some key statistics on the outbreak.
- There are now 69 active cases of coronavirus linked to the current community clusters
- The Delta cluster now counts nine active cases
- 339 primary close contacts at North Melbourne Primary School have been tested and 82 per cent have returned negative test results
- 600 primary close contacts identified early in this outbreak have cleared their 13-day tests
- Another 800 primary close contacts are taking day 13 tests today
- 150 exposure sites were expected to drop off the official list as those tests were completed
Mr Weimar said one of today’s new cases is a worker at a large CBD construction site run by major builder Probuild.
ProbuildCredit: Elke Meitzel
He could not name the site but said there were 170 close contacts identified with that site.
“The construction industry has worked incredibly hard over the last place really strong workplace controls workplace recording systems,” he said.
“That site is now closed and we’ll continue to work with them over the coming days.”
Mr Weimar was also asked whether there was any hint of where the pair of unlinked cases had contracted the virus.
“We have now a total of seven positive cases, on a number of different days, who have been in and out of Craigieburn shopping centre and individual stores within there,” he said.
“That is a leading line of our investigation at the moment. We’re working closely to get his exact movements and exactly overlaps with other positive cases, but that is the lead hypothesis at this point in time.”
Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton added that he did not think it was likely the virus was picked up from a surface at the shopping centre.
“It is a lesson that you should have awareness of all of those settings, all of the exposure sites that are listed as current, because if you’re attending there regularly or if you’ve been there at a time that’s listed, it’s really important to get tested,” he said.
The Doherty Institute’s Sharon Lewin is talking through the process of trying to find the match for the new Delta outbreak which has concerned authorities.
Professor Lewin said the most likely source of the Delta variant outbreak was the hotel quarantine system.
Asked if there was a chance the family in West Melbourne had caught the virus in Jervis Bay on a trip to NSW, she said only “extensive testing in the Jervis Bay Area and no further case, so that’s happening right now”.
“My strong hypothesis is that it’s coming through a importation from overseas, through our quarantine hotels, that would be the most likely.”
Professor Sharon Lewin.Credit:
Professor Lewin said the possibility of a quarantine leak could not be 100 per cent proven though because only about 70 to 80 per cent of cases were successfully sequenced.
“So there are 20 per cent of people who are positive and we do not have a genetic barcode for. So [a hotel quarantine breach] is my strongest hypothesis,” she said.
The Doherty Institute handles the genomic sequencing for every positive coronavirus case in Victoria.
Professor Lewin said that process means the institute can identify the sequence in about 80 per cent of positive cases and those are then matched against national and international databases.
“The first thing is about infectiousness. At the moment in Victoria we have two strains, the Kappa strain - which is the main strain - and ... the Delta strain,” she said.
“In the UK they compare a range of factors to the Alpha strain, the original valued.
“From the UK data we are getting very clear evidence that both the Kappa and the Delta strains are about 50 per cent more infectious. That is based on something called the attack rate; the number of positives over the number of people exposed, which is 8 per cent for Delta and 11 per cent for Kappa.”
She said the Delta variant also had a greater rate of hospitalisation in Britain than the Alpha variant.
We are aware that there are issues with audio on the livestream.
We are working on those technical issues and will keep bringing you live reporting of all the news from the media conference.
We apologise for any inconvenience that issue is causing.
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2021-06-05 03:12:19Z
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