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This morning’s headlines at a glance
By Nigel Gladstone
Good morning and welcome to our live coverage. It’s Sunday, July 18. I’m Nigel Gladstone.
It’s set to be a busy day today as tighter restrictions hit residents in south-west Sydney and Victoria’s Delta outbreak continues with unvaccinated younger people infecting others before contact tracers reach them, potentially pushing the lockdown beyond five days.
Here’s what’s happened recently.
- NSW recorded 111 new cases of coronavirus yesterday, prompting the government to place tighter restrictions on people in south-west Sydney who will not be able to leave their region unless they are emergency services or healthcare workers, which includes those in the aged and disability sectors.
Eighteen of Victoria’s latest COVID-19 cases were infectious in the community for an average of 1.7 days, vindicating the state government’s “go hard, go early” lockdown strategy, but health authorities have refused to rule out an extension of the five-day snap lockdown. Victoria recorded 19 new local cases of coronavirus on Saturday, as new sites at popular tourist spot Phillip Island, a Richmond gym and a Docklands office building swelled the list of high-risk exposure sites to 165.
- NSW has pleaded for contact tracing help from other states, as the system struggles to keep pace with the growing outbreak. The state made an “open request” for assistance during a meeting of Australia’s federal and state chief medical officers on Friday, with the Commonwealth, South Australian and Western Australian governments all agreeing to help but Victoria knocked back the request, as it works to trace growing case numbers.
Victoria’s Delta outbreak is being fuelled by people under 40 who have been unable to secure a vaccination and are infecting others before contact tracers reach them. The state’s lockdown is threatening to extend beyond five days, with 19 new local cases recorded on Saturday, taking the total number of infected people in the latest outbreak to 43. More than 10,000 close contacts are isolating across Victoria.
- Dozens of truck drivers drove in a convoy with horns blaring across Sydney for nearly two hours on Saturday afternoon to protest the NSW government’s decision to close the construction industry for two weeks as part of a COVID-19 lockdown.
Before non-essential retail in Sydney closed at midnight on Saturday, about 100 people converged on a park in Bankstown to protest the tougher restrictions. Two people were charged and eight fines were issued for breaching the state’s health orders.
Conservative English media personality Katie Hopkins has admitted she has been deliberately flouting infection control in hotel quarantine in Sydney, after flying into the country this week.
Stay tuned for more developments as they happen.
Life for Australians in Seattle, America’s most vaccinated city, is getting back to normal
By Sue Williams
It was once one of the world’s most treacherous COVID-19 hotspots, but Seattle is now a city in stark contrast to Australia’s locked-down capitals and the Australians living there are gutted at the difference between their lives and those of their compatriots back home.
‘People took the situation seriously right away,’ says Rochelle Howie, who lives in Seattle with her husband Shaun, son Lachlan and daughter Skye.
“It’s a crazy turnaround,” said Daniella Phair, 32, a Melbourne lawyer who’s working in Seattle for Amazon. “Here, you basically wouldn’t know that coronavirus had ever happened. I think we’re now the most vaccinated metro city in the country, all restrictions were lifted on June 30, we don’t have to wear masks anywhere and all the restaurants are back to full capacity.
Read more here.
‘No mask, we don’t ask’: COVID sparks conflict in Australia’s anti-vaxxer capital
By Andrew Taylor
Shops in Australia’s anti-vaxxer capital are flouting COVID-19 regulations on wearing masks, amid claims that health authorities are doing little to counter vaccine hesitancy and refusal.
Local politicians have also been accused of being too scared to challenge anti-vaxxers in Mullumbimby, near Byron Bay on the NSW north coast, where people have been accosted in the street for wearing masks.
Some shops in Mullumbimby, the anti-vaxxer capital, are flouting rules on wearing masks.
Tamara Smith, the Greens member for Ballina, said there had not been any targeted public health campaigns to address vaccine hesitancy.
“On the contrary, the mixed messages coming from the Prime Minister about various vaccines have amplified and made that hesitancy much worse,” Ms Smith said.
Read more here.
Victoria triples ICU capacity to avoid COVID nightmare
By Paul Sakkal
The number of ICU beds in Victoria has risen threefold since the onset of the pandemic, with the state’s health system now well-equipped to withstand any wave of COVID-19 cases.
As the virus tore through cities such as New York and Milan in the first half of 2020, the Andrews government announced it would add 4000 ICU beds to the state’s existing 500 beds, dwarfing the national pool of 2400 beds.
A COVID-19 patient receives treatment in an ICU.Credit:Kate Geraghty
Federal government modelling in April last year predicted daily demand for ICU beds in Australia would be between 5000 and 35,000. Initial forecasts from government departments and epidemiologists did not play out as the federal and state governments implemented resilient quarantine and tracing protocols to largely snuff out the virus.
Read more here.
Golf: the unlikely big hit of the pandemic
By Sarah Berry
A year ago, golf was such a dwindling sport, Sydney’s lord mayor Clover Moore proposed halving one of the country’s most popular courses to provide more parklands for locals.
The pandemic however has provided a hole-in-one for the game. Being one of the few sports permitted to continue during lockdown, golf is enjoying its first uptick in numbers since Greg Norman gave Australians someone to swing for, with a quarter of a million more people playing in the last year.
Swinging into golf: more people are playing the game.Credit:Illustration by Dionne Gain
And despite its undeniable image problem in recent years – which stems partly from the perception that the vast swathes of green space are elitist sanctuaries for wealthy, mostly male, toffs – Golf Australia chief executive officer, James Sutherland, insists it’s changing and that it is a game for everyone.
Read more here.
Around the world in 80 days at sea: Couple ‘yacht-hop’ their way home
By Rachael Dexter
Imagine you’re an Australian citizen stranded overseas. Would you fork out more $30,000 for two tickets on a flight at risk of cancellation? Or would you choose to spend more than 80 days crewing a yacht across the largest ocean in the world in order to get home?
One couple chose the latter, opting for a months-long odyssey in a bid to avoid Australia’s caps on incoming flights, which were further tightened last week.
After 62 days at sea, 356 buckets of water and months of hitchhiking on yachts across the globe, 31-year-old Jake Shephard and 27-year-old Tamara Ilic are almost home.
After 62 days at sea, 356 buckets of water and months of hitchhiking on yachts across the globe, 31-year-old Jake Shephard and 27-year-old Tamara Ilic are almost home.
Their journey began on March 2 last year when the pair from Tweed Heads in NSW flew from Sydney to Bangkok for what should have been a stint working as travel agents.
Read more here.
Teachers can enter red zone for work, but those who live within cannot leave
By Caitlin Fitzsimmons
Teachers in locked-down south-western Sydney will not be able to attend work in person outside the red zone under the harsher lockdown restrictions announced on Saturday.
Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced on Saturday that people who live in the Fairfield, Canterbury-Bankstown and Liverpool local government areas could not leave their own council area for work, unless they were emergency services and healthcare workers, including aged and disability workers.
Education Minister Sarah Mitchell said it was important for schools to remain open.
Education Minister Sarah Mitchell said the Department of Education would provide more detailed advice about the new restrictions to staff today.
Read more here.
Former Murdoch exec slams Fox News over vaccine misinformation
By Matthew Knott
Washington: One of Rupert Murdoch’s former top executives says Fox News has cost lives by turbo-charging hesitancy about COVID-19 vaccines among conservative Americans.
Joseph Azam, a former senior vice president at News Corp in New York, said he saw a “straight line” between the vaccine-sceptical rhetoric of some of Fox’s most prominent hosts and entrenched resistance to vaccines in large swathes of the United States.
Former News Corp senior vice president Joseph Azam says he is alarmed by Fox News’s coverage of COVID-19 vaccines.
“I think Fox has been almost single-handedly responsible for the politicisation of public health in the US and the creation of vaccine hesitancy in a significant portion of the population,” Azam told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
“It’s been tremendously damaging.”
Fox News host Tucker Carlson, the most-watched cable news presenter in America, has suggested that COVID-19 vaccines may not work and claimed they had killed thousands of Americans.
Read more here.
AFL v Delta: why the show will go on, without virus delays
By Jake Niall
As borders close and the virus closes in, the AFL is increasingly a seat-of-the-pants operation with clubs thrown around the continent, in a thus-far successful attempt to stay one step ahead of the dreaded Delta variant.
This has elements of a bad dystopian disaster movie, with teams on the run like John Cusack in the film 2012.
Jack Steele after St Kilda’s loss to the Power at a crowdless Marvel Stadium.Credit:Getty Images
Given the situation, it’s natural to ask whether the AFL, its players and teams can keep the show on the road; if rather than coping with mere lockdowns, they will soon be dealing with a shutdown - a period without games, even of a short duration.
Read more here.
Katie Hopkins admits to breaking hotel quarantine rules in Sydney
By Rachael Dexter
Conservative English media personality Katie Hopkins has admitted she has been deliberately flouting infection control in hotel quarantine in Sydney, after flying into the country this week.
Conservative English media personality Katie Hopkins has admitted she has been deliberately flouting infection control in hotel quarantine in Sydney, after flying into the country this week.
Ms Hopkins told her Instagram followers on Saturday morning she was trying to taunt the guards in her hotel by answering her door naked and without a mask.
Katie Hopkins mocking the hotel quarantine safety rules upon her arrival in Australia.Credit:Instagram
“The police officer who checked me in told me when they knock on my door I have to wait 30 seconds ’til I can open the door [to collect food],” she laughed in the Instagram Live video which is no longer viewable on her account.
Read more here.
Truck convoy chokes Sydney’s roads
By Caitlin Fitzsimmons
Dozens of truck drivers drove in a convoy with horns blaring across Sydney for nearly two hours on Saturday afternoon to protest the NSW government’s decision to close the construction industry for two weeks as part of a COVID-19 lockdown.
The protest, which organisers claimed had more than 100 trucks, started at the M2 near Baulkham Hills at 3pm and drove over the Sydney Harbour Bridge before finishing on the Anzac Bridge close to 5pm, choking arterial roads.
Sydney truck convoy protesting restrictions on construction work in NSW. Credit:Lanz Priestley
The event was organised by truck drivers through Facebook groups, with unions including Transport Workers Union and CFMMEU distancing themselves from the action when contacted.
The NSW government has announced all construction in Greater Sydney would be paused until July 30 as part of an increasingly strict COVID-19 lockdown aimed at stopping the spread of the Delta variant.
Read more here.
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2021-07-17 22:27:40Z
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