As it happened: Victoria to exit lockdown at midnight Thursday, NSW hits 80% vaccination target

Thank you so much for joining us today.

We’re finishing the blog for the evening, but will be back bright and early tomorrow morning with our daily blog focusing on news from around Australia, including the latest on the COVID-19 pandemic.

But for now, let’s take a look back at Sunday’s major stories:-

• The Victorian government announced metropolitan Melbourne would exit lockdown on Friday, signalling the reopening of hospitality venues, outdoor entertainment and hairdressers, with the return of home visits and travel from home beyond 15 kilometres. Melburnians still cannot access regional Victoria.
• The change in Victoria’s restrictions came after the state’s vaccination rate rose sharply and key modelling assumptions turning out to be pessimistic. The two factors combined to slash predictions of a huge surge in demand for hospital beds – dramatically cutting the risk of overwhelming the healthcare system. The state recorded 1,838 cases and seven deaths on Sunday.
• NSW recorded 301 locally acquired cases. Almost half of those infections were reported in south west Sydney and the Hunter New England are, with ten additional COVID-19 deaths.

• Queensland says its push to get people vaccinated via Bunnings sites has been a massive success, with 20 per cent of the state’s vaccines yesterday given out at its stores. The state recorded no new cases today.

• Australia will reopen its quarantine-free travel zone with New Zealand’s South Island from Tuesday at midnight.
• The NSW government will direct $130 million towards a mental health package that will open up public access to private psychologists and psychiatrists, boost Headspace funding and train the community in suicide prevention.
• Almost one third of children aged 12 to 15 in NSW have received two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine and 74 per cent have had their first dose.
• Sydney rattled back to life on its first weekend out of lockdown, with wedding parties and parishioners alike making the best of the fine weather.

Thanks again for reading along and contributing to the discussion in the comments - have a wonderful evening.

A few years back I read about a study on how much our personalities change each decade of our lives. The purpose of the study was to show how bad we were at knowing we’d change a lot in the next 10 years, but I took great comfort in realising that who I was isn’t who I am now, and that I don’t yet know who I will be.

The reason why I bring this up now is because it’s been at least 10 years since March 2020 (or at least it feels like it), and we’ve been presented with an opportunity few will ever have: we get to completely reinvent ourselves, if we choose, without first having to fake our own deaths or move continents.

How many times in history have people been forced to hide from most of society for months at a time, and be able to emerge from their chrysalis without the added complication of a criminal record?

So, with Melbourne’s lockdown lifting on Thursday, we still have a few days to work out who we’re going to be before our debut back into society. Let’s treasure this opportunity and see it for what it could be.

Sure, it could be inconvenient that none of our clothes fit properly any more due to comfort eating/over-exercising. Instead, let’s see this as an opportunity to embrace our new post-pandemic style.

Read the full opinion piece here.

It’s one of the most popular destinations for Melbourne travellers, so Mornington Peninsula mayor Despi O’Connor predicts businesses in the region will be both popping champagne as lockdown ends.

Cr O’Connor said businesses had weathered yet another horrific year as Melbourne lockdowns and international flight bans cut tourism visits to the peninsula - which is classed as metropolitan Melbourne, not regional Victoria.

The Victorian government’s announcement of Melbourne’s lockdown ending at 11.59pm on Thursday surprised some in the area who were planning for visitors to return on the dates listed in the government road map.

“Our small businesses here have been so resilient and just kept on going in whatever way, shape or form they could,” Cr O’Connor said.

“They will have to try and manage bookings and make sure everything is ready. One of the [business] chambers I talk to already had people making restaurant bookings for November 5 and onwards, so the phones will be running hot while they try and prepare themselves.”

Read the full story here.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has urged every eligible person to get vaccinated as he hopes the state could chase 94 per cent double doses or higher:

I don’t think it’ll just stop at 90 per cent, that’s not a ceiling, I think it’ll creep beyond that.

It’ll maybe get to 92, 93, or 94 per cent. Every percentage point that’s fully vaccinated is literally tens of thousands of people less getting sick and finishing up needing hospitalisation.

It will absolutely impact, not just what opening up looks like but what next year looks like, because each and every fully vaccinated person has considerable protection, really strong protection against becoming really, really unwell.

The point here is this some of the positive numbers we’re seeing in hospitals - so reduced length of stay, less people finishing up in hospital for a shorter period of time, and being less unwell - is a function of the fact that the pandemic of the unvaccinated is coming a smaller and smaller group.

It tends to be younger as those people were last to get vaccinated and the most mobile.