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Melbourne family health care centre added to exposure sites
By Rachel Eddie
A family health care centre in Broadmeadows in Melbourne’s northern suburbs has been listed as a tier one exposure site.
There are now 904 exposure sites in Victoria.
Broadmeadows Family Health Care, at 357 Camp Road, was added to the list on Wednesday night. Anyone who attended the clinic last Tuesday August 24, between 2.35pm and 4.20pm, needs to isolate for 14 days.
A number of tier two sites, requiring people to isolate until returning a negative test, have also been added on Wednesday night:
- Geelong West: 7 Origins Cafe, 208 Pakington Street, Saturday August 28, 2.20pm to 3.10pm.
- Geelong West: Poco Cafe Express, 111 Pakington Street, Sunday August 29, 11am to 12.10pm.
- Southbank: 7-Eleven, 1 Freshwater Place, Friday August 27, 7.55pm to 8.25am.
- Southbank: Woolworths Melbourne Square, 1/10 Hoff Boulevard, Monday August 30, 10.10am to 11am.
- Sunshine: Roshan Supermarket, 5/9 Clarke Street, August 22, 7am to 7.40am.
- Brunswick East; Australia Post, 167 Lygon Street, Monday August 30, 3pm to 3.35pm.
- Elsternwick: Coles, 475 Glen Huntly Road, Sunday August 29, 3.50pm to 4.40pm; Tuesday August 31, 9.10am to 9.45am.
- Geelong West: Coles, 166-188 Shannon Avenue, Sunday August 29, 12pm to 1.05pm.
- Hadfield: West Street Fruits, 132 West Street, Saturday August 28, 1.20pm to 3pm.
- Hadfield: Zaatar on West, 114 West Street, Saturday August 28, 1.30pm to 2.07pm.
- Albion: Dulux Trade Centre, 592 Ballarat Road, August 21, 10.48am to 11.30am.
- Seaholme: Liberty Altona, 42 Millers Road, August 21, 12.46pm to 1.25pm.
- Hoppers Crossing: Ceylon Delicious, 2/266-274 Derrimut Road, last Friday August 27, 5.30pm to 6.30pm; Saturday August 29, 5.30pm to 6.30pm.
- Brunswick East: Coles, East Brunswick Village EBR, 127-137 Nicholson Street, last Friday August 27, 7am to 4.30pm; Saturday August 28, 6.40am to 10.30am; Sunday August 29, 6.40am to 12.3pm.
- Altona North: 7-Eleven, corner Millers Road and Kororoit Road, last Monday August 23, 3.55pm to 4.30pm.
They join tier one sites, reported earlier this afternoon, the PAS Group head office on Church Street in Richmond and apartments on Peterson Avenue in Coburg North.
For more details, check the Department of Health’s website.
Concerns for Victoria’s growing outbreak
By Rachel Eddie
Nancy Baxter, head of the University of Melbourne’s school of population and global health, has expressed concern that Melbourne’s outbreak could catch up to Sydney’s within five weeks if case numbers continue to grow.
Premier Daniel Andrews on Wednesday conceded that Victoria could not run the Delta variant of COVID-19 down to zero using lockdown restrictions, and will instead push to maintain manageable levels of the virus in the community and focus on vaccinations.
Professor Baxter said she worried Melbourne could end up in Sydney’s situation, which has just recorded 1116 new cases but has a higher vaccination rate than Victoria.
“We’re still not going to have enough people vaccinated to really change the trajectory as much as we’d like,” she told ABC Melbourne Radio’s Drive program on Wednesday.
“Until today, and maybe it was naive of me, but I had held up hope that we’d be able to drive this down to like 30-40 cases a day and be able to have a little bit more liberty between now and when we’re [70 per cent] vaccinated.”
She said Australia had broadly still done well compared to “the calamity they had in New York City, Milan”.
“We still have a lot of unprotected people, so that is a possibility if we let this really go … This is a much more infectious version of the virus and also a more deadly version of the virus.”
But despite feeling dejected today, Professor Baxter said vaccines were still doing their job and had stopped Sydney hospitals from “absolutely overflowing” with people sick with COVID-19.
“So it’s not a bad news story ... but it’s not a good news story either.”
Victorian-NSW border tightens
By Rachel Eddie
Victoria’s Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton has moved to tighten the state’s borders even further, removing towns from a cross-border bubble with parts of NSW from 11.59pm tomorrow.
“With over one thousand cases per day, and a trajectory of exponential growth, the risk that NSW poses to Victoria is bigger than ever,” Professor Sutton said in his daily statement.
Victorian Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton at Wednesday’s media conference.Credit:Getty
“That’s why we are reducing the number of communities in the border bubble.”
Six local government areas - Bendigo, Shepparton, Benalla, Buloke, Loddon, Yarriambiack - and two NSW council areas - Broken Hill and Edward River - will no longer be included as a cross-border community.
The effect of the decision will stop residents of the areas from using a permit to enter Victoria from NSW.
NSW Police chief defends enforcement measures during COVID outbreak
By Fergus Hunter
NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller has said the decision to escalate enforcement of COVID-19 restrictions in the state was not based directly on health advice but community transmissions of the Delta variant would be 10 times the current level if not for police intervention.
Revealing police have issued about 18,000 fines over the past six weeks of enforcement of public health orders, Mr Fuller told a NSW Parliament budget estimates hearing on Wednesday that he had committed to “treating the virus like a criminal” to support the pandemic response.
NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller.Credit:James Brickwood
In a recent message to the force urging a tougher approach, Mr Fuller directed officers to “put community policing to the side for a short period of time” and said they would not be held to account for issuing fines that turned out to be wrong.
Questioned in estimates, Mr Fuller said the escalation had increased because the Delta variant was taking hold in the community and people were not complying with health orders.
‘Time to start innovating,’ Victorian epidemiologist says of COVID outbreak
By Michaela Whitbourn
Professor Tony Blakely, an epidemiologist and public health medicine specialist at the University of Melbourne, says Australia will need to start innovating in response to the spread of the highly transmissible Delta variant of COVID-19.
“We need to start increasing the ventilation in schools and public buildings for when we want to go back later in the year because it will help dampen things down,” Professor Blakely told the ABC’s Patricia Karvelas this afternoon. “It is time to start innovating.”
Melbourne University epidemiologist Tony Blakely.
He said rapid antigen testing should also be considered as people started returning to work.
“We now are living with the virus. I think people would have seen that coming for a week or so,” said Professor Blakely of the shift in Victoria’s public health strategy.
He added he had previously “proposed elimination strategy, [and] I still think it is the best thing to do, we’d be grateful in the long run”.
“Right now if we opened up it would be awful. I am sick of it [lockdown] but I realise we have to do it for quite a bit longer. It will be longer than three weeks [in Victoria].
“It will be three weeks at best, and then it will ease off a little bit. We have no choice. Get vaccinated, it is what we have to do. And think innovatively. That is what we need to do.”
Professor Blakely has also written an opinion piece for The Age and you can read it by clicking on the related article to the right.
EU removes United States from safe travel list
By Anthony Dennis
There are increasingly disturbing signs from Europe that the much-heralded rebooting of tourism may be proving something of a false Delta dawn, Traveller’s national travel editor Anthony Dennis reports.
Could it be that a tremulous Australia and New Zealand’s combined border circumspection - accentuated by our slowcoach vaccine procurement - may yet prove the wiser stance?
Beach near the island of Sveti Stefan Hotel, MontenegroCredit:iStock
As desperate as it has been for the tourism lucre to start flowing again across a strongly tourism-dependent continent, the European Union has this week removed the US, where COVID-19 case numbers and deaths are escalating again, from a safe travel list, recommending that COVID restrictions on American visitors be reinstated.
It’s only two months since the EU rescinded most of its restrictions on US visitors and coincides with growing reports of even fully-vaccinated American tourists shying away from international travel.
And the difficulties aren’t confined to the US, with the World Travel & Tourism Council representative body demanding that the British government end its controversial, confusing and complicated travel traffic light system, according to Travel Daily UK.
In the latest update to the UK system, only seven countries were added to the green light, safe to travel, list, while Thailand and Montenegro, both popular with sun-loving British tourists, were suddenly added to the red, no go, list, in an echo of last northern summer’s chaos.
Victoria records highest-ever single-day vaccination numbers
By Craig Butt
Victoria has clocked up a record day for vaccines administered, with health department data showing more than 100,000 people received a vaccine shot on Tuesday.
A total of 105,018 COVID-19 doses were administered yesterday, more than 60,000 of them to people receiving their first dose.
The sizable first dose numbers yesterday also mean that the date Victoria will likely reach its target of 70 per cent of its eligible population (those aged 16 and above) having received their first dose has moved slightly closer.
Over the past seven days, about 36,500 people each day have received their first dose.
If this pace is maintained this month, then Victoria is set to reach the 70 per cent first dose target around September 20. This graph (which I will be updating every day around 4pm when the daily vaccine data is released), shows how the state is tracking against this target:
Previously (see the 1.43pm post), the estimate being put forward was the target being reached on September 23, but taking into account yesterday’s record-breaking vaccine tally means that the rollout is gathering pace.
When the 70 per cent target is met, some of the changes will include the five-kilometre limit being expanded to 10 kilometres, exercise time being extended from two hours to three hours and childminding for school-aged children being permitted.
(If you’ve read this far down into this data post, I might as well spell out a potential caveat with the data: sometimes the daily totals are disproportionately high because of delayed reporting of historical doses or disproportionately low because of historical double-counting being removed. There have been some issues with this in the Victorian data over the past couple of weeks, so this may have been a factor in Tuesday’s figure).
Morrison government accuses Palaszczuk of ‘scaremongering’ about kids and COVID-19
By Nick Bonyhady
Back in Canberra and the stoush between Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews and Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, Ms Andrews has accused Ms Palaszczuk of “scaremongering” over the consequences for children of reopening state borders.
Earlier on Wednesday Ms Palaszczuk all but said she would not open up the state until children under 12 are vaccinated against COVID-19.
As yet, there is no vaccine approved for children under 12 but adolescents aged between 12 and 15 are expected to be vaccinated from the middle of this month.
“You open up this state and you let the virus in here, every child under 12 is vulnerable, every single child, if anyone has any children under 12 to zero, is vulnerable [sic] because they are the unvaccinated,” Ms Palaszczuk said in Queensland Parliament.
She said she wanted more modelling on the effect that reopening would have on children.
As the federal government ramps up its attacks on states who are reluctant to commit to dropping border restrictions once 70 to 80 per cent of people aged over 16 are vaccinated, Ms Andrews lashed the premier’s stance, saying there were clear things Australians could do to protect children.
And, as science reporter Liam Mannix has written, “there is strong evidence COVID-19 poses very little threat to children”.
Here’s Ms Andrews:
I’d also like to make a comment in relation to some scaremongering by the Queensland premier in relation to children under 12 years of age. Now clearly every one is concerned about Australia’s children.
But there is no country in the world that is vaccinating anyone under 12 years of age and Australia’s Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly has made that very clear.
It is also very clear that the best way to protect our children is to make sure that we, as adults, are vaccinated. So to the mums and dads, if you want to protect your children I encourage do you get vaccinated and to make sure your other family members are vaccinated.
‘Dragon slayer’: former maritime union boss John Coombs dies aged 81
By Nick Bonyhady
Former Maritime Union of Australia boss John Coombs, who fought the bitter waterfront dispute against Patrick Stevedores, has died at the age of 81.
Unionists past and present hailed him as a giant of the movement who battled the Howard government and, in their view, prevailed.
“John fought for and defended his members and the members of all unions,” said former Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Bill Kelty.
“His contributions to the union movement and the rights of ordinary workers across the country was immeasurable.”
Mr Coombs joined the then Waterside Workers Federation in 1968 and rose to become national secretary of the Maritime Union of Australia, which also took in seafarers, from 1993 to 2000, when he retired to care for his eldest son Gary, who had multiple sclerosis.
“John… became a significant advocate on behalf of all multiple sclerosis sufferers in particular, and the disability sector in general,” said the union’s current national secretary, Paddy Crumlin.
Another former ACTU secretary and chair of Industry Super Funds Greg Combet said Mr Coombs had been one of his dearest friends.
“No one who lived through the waterfront dispute in the late 1990s could forget John Coombs’ tenacity, passion, and integrity as the leader of his union,” Mr Combet said. “He was a titan of the labour movement.”
To ACTU secretary Sally McManus, Mr Coombes was the “dragon slayer” who inspired generations of unionists.
The cause of Mr Coombes’ death has not been released but Mr Crumlin said he’d suffered a long illness.
He is survived by his wife Gwen, children Jenny and Stephen and wider family. His funeral has not yet been arranged.
Home Affairs Minister takes aim at Queensland Premier
By Nick Bonyhady
Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews is once again on the warpath against Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.
Ms Palaszczuk said earlier on Wednesday that 50 rooms in hotel quarantine would be made available to Queenslanders returning from interstate, who had previously been barred from returning, after criticism of her decision to allow in a group of NRL players and their entourages numbering more than 100.
Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews in Parliament with Prime Minister Scott Morrison.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
Here’s Ms Andrews’ comments on that in Canberra:
I am very pleased that the Queensland premier has reversed an earlier decision and is now allowing 50 spots for Queenslanders to return home. This is great news that the Premier has started listening to Queensland who were rightly outraged when NRL players and their wives were flown into Queensland at the same time that Queenslanders were locked out of their own state.
Queenslanders are very concerned at the Premier’s hypocrisy. On one hand she has said that quarantine in hotels does not work. And yet, she allows a plane load of people to come in, NRL players and wives, to come in from Sydney, the hottest of the hot spots in Australia and to go into hotel quarantine in Queensland while at the same time making it clear that she will not allow people to cross the Queensland border even if they live in Queensland.
It has had a devastating impact on the border towns of the Gold Coast and Tweed Heads. Businesses, quite frankly, have had enough. It is really time that the Queensland premier starts to focus on how she is going to reopen Queensland and not take every available opportunity to shut Queensland down. Queenslanders have started to speak out. They have started to make it very clear that they want their life back, they want their borders to reopen, they want to be able to move across the Queensland and New South Wales border.
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2021-09-01 06:33:33Z
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