As it happened: Victoria records 1126 new local COVID-19 cases, five deaths; NSW restrictions ease as state records 187 new cases, seven deaths; Michael Sukkar responds to allegations

• Flight Centre chief executive Graham Turner has flagged a potential Federal Court challenge to Western Australia’s decision to keep borders closed until next year. While businessman and former politician Clive Palmer lost a High Court challenge to WA’s border restrictions last year, Mr Turner said “we will be looking at a judicial review in the Federal Court, rather than a constitutional challenge in the High Court”. He said “the other big difference is that there are widespread vaccinations now”, which may affect a court’s assessment of the reasonableness of the extended border closure.

• Prime Minister Scott Morrison said WA’s decision, announced last week, to keep borders shut until 90 per cent of the population aged 12 and older had been fully vaccinated was out of step with the national plan. “The advice we have from the secretary of Treasury ... is once you go over 80 per cent [of people aged 16 and over] and you keep things locked down you are doing more harm than good to your economy,” Mr Morrison said. Tasmania has set the same target, but is on track to meet it by a firm reopening date of December 15. WA has forecast that the 90 per cent double dose target will not be reached until late January or early February.

• NSW recorded 187 new locally acquired cases of COVID-19 and seven deaths, including an unvaccinated man in his 30s from Sydney’s south-west who had no significant underlying health conditions. Two more people died in Albury: a partially vaccinated woman in her 80s and a fully vaccinated woman in her 90s both at the Mercy Place aged care facility, where they contracted the virus. Eight people have died after an outbreak at this facility. An unvaccinated man in his 80s died at Prince of Wales Hospital, where he contracted the virus.
• There are 264 people in NSW’s hospitals with the virus, including 48 in intensive care. A report released by NSW Health revealed unvaccinated people who caught COVID-19 at the height of Sydney’s Delta wave between June and October were 16 times more likely to enter intensive care than cases who were double-dosed.

• The Hunter New England Local Health District including the northern NSW town of Moree has been of concern in recent days amid a spike in coronavirus cases. While it’s too early to know if this is a trend, cases dropped on Monday. Forty new infections were recorded, compared with more than 70 cases per day for the past four days.
• NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet said NSW would hit a new vaccination milestone “today or tomorrow”: 90 per cent of people aged 16 and over in the state will be fully vaccinated against coronavirus. Mr Perrottet said he believed the state would ultimately reach a 95 per cent vaccination rate.
• Restrictions for the fully vaccinated eased further in NSW. From today, the 20-person limit on home visits is scrapped for those who have had two jabs. For outdoor gatherings, the limit is now 1000 people. For retail and hospitality, density limits are now one person per two square metres and stadiums may operate at 100 per cent capacity. Masks must still be worn indoors and on public transport. Gym classes are still limited to 20 people. Unvaccinated people remain subject to stay-at-home restrictions until December 15 or when the state reaches a 95 per cent double-dose rate (whichever comes first).

• Victoria recorded 1126 new cases of COVID-19, down slightly from yesterday’s 1173 cases, and five deaths. There are 556 coronavirus patients in Victorian hospitals, of whom 91 are in intensive care. Fifty-four people are on a ventilator. Vaccination rates are surging ahead: 84 per cent of Victorians aged 12 and over have now had both jabs.
• From Monday, Victorians will be able to access dining vouchers of up to $150 if eating out in the Melbourne CBD. It’s part of a state and local government plan to boost the post-lockdown hospitality sector. But there is a catch: the vouchers are available only to those who have a night on the town on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday (the quietest days of the week).
• Meanwhile, Victorian Deputy Premier James Merlino announced Victorian schools would receive free rapid antigen tests. Students who have access to the tests will be able to return to school after just seven days, even if they’re unvaccinated and a close contact of a positive case (as long as they complete a negative PCR test on day six and return to rapid antigen testing each day after that). Fully vaccinated students will be able to return to school after seven days of isolation and will not need to complete rapid antigen testing.

• Queensland recorded no new cases of COVID-19 but low testing rates are of concern to health officials. Health Minister Yvette D’Ath said the state had not detected any new cases overnight from 5879 tests, despite a cluster of cases emerging in the southern border town of Goondiwindi in recent days and a COVID-positive person spending time in the Cairns community while infectious.
• The ACT recorded 13 new locally acquired cases of COVID-19. Over the past 24 hours, 1476 people tested negative to the virus. There is just one person in hospital in Canberra with the virus, and they are on a ventilator in an intensive care unit. Canberrans have turned out in droves to get vaccinated, and 95.1 per cent of people aged 12 and over have received both doses of a coronavirus vaccine.

This is Michaela Whitbourn signing off on the blog for today. My colleague Broede Carmody will be back with you early tomorrow morning.

More than 340 people were fined for using a mobile phone while driving, while nearly 300 people were caught drink driving.

Additionally, police saw more than 230 people return positive drug tests, and more than 280 unlicensed drivers.

Over the AFL Grand Final weekend, almost 200 Victorian motorists were detected drink and drug driving, while 920 people were caught speeding.

Assistant Commissioner Road Policing, Glenn Weir, said while it was great that Victorians could now travel across the state, it was “extremely disappointing police have seen such disregard towards road safety”.

“We have caught far too many people undertaking high-risk driving behaviour during this period – the number of people detected speeding at mid-range to high levels is alarming,” he said.

Operation Compass ran across eight days from 12.01am October 29 to 11.59pm on Melbourne Cup day, and then again from 12.01am on November 5 to midnight on November 7.

Mr Gunner said the territory had “the oldest living culture on the planet to protect” and warned that there was a “terrifying complacency” about the virus in some parts of the territory.

Our remote communities are more vulnerable than the rest of Australia. They have a higher rate of underlying health factors that place many of our people at greater risk of serious complications or death if they get COVID.

They are also younger. The median age in Adelaide is 41. In Sydney it’s 38. In Darwin, it’s 34. Across many of our remote communities and homelands, it is in the low 20s.

Simple maths tells us that vaccinating 80 per cent of people 16 and over in a community where the median age is 25 won’t give you the same coverage or protection as a community where the median age is 40.

The new target vaccination rate in remote communities was 80 per cent of people aged five and older, although Mr Gunner acknowledged that the Therapeutic Goods Administration has yet to approve a vaccine for children aged 5 to 11.

“The goalposts have moved, and we will move with them,” Mr Gunner said.

He outlined the following policies to reduce the risk of COVID-19 getting into remote NT communities:

• Any worker going to any remote community in the territory must have a first dose of a coronavirus vaccine by Friday, November 12, and must be fully vaccinated by December 24.
• In every remote community, testing of symptomatic people will be “aggressively step[ped] up”.
• From Monday, November 15, anyone who enters a remote, low-vaccination community (those with vaccination levels below 70 per cent of people aged five and over) from Darwin, Alice Springs, Katherine or interstate must wear a mask in public for seven days. This applies whether the person is a resident or a worker.
• Anyone entering remote, low vaccination communities from Darwin, Alice Springs, Katherine or interstate must undertake a rapid antigen test 72 hours before entry from Friday, November 19. A small cohort of workers travelling regularly to those communities will be required to submit to a weekly PCR test (this is the “gold standard” coronavirus test performed in clinics, and not carried out with home testing kits).

Every person who died from the virus after receiving both doses of vaccine – 47 of the 412 deaths during the reviewed period – was either elderly or had significant comorbidities, such as heart failure or cancer.

The average age of a fully vaccinated person who died was 82. Twenty-nine of the 47 were aged care residents.

Read the full story here.

As reported in the previous post, Greater Darwin’s lockout has been extended until at least midnight on Tuesday while the lockout in Katherine ends at 5pm today. People in Katherine must continue to wear masks outside their homes when they cannot maintain social distancing.

The Northern Territory has set a new target vaccination rate for remote communities, some of which have a median age in the 20s. In those communities, the vaccination rate will now be 80 per cent of people aged five and older, not 16 and older.

Mr Gunner acknowledged that the Therapeutic Goods Administration has yet to approve a vaccine for children aged 5 to 11.

He also outlined the following changes:

• From Monday, November 15, anyone who enters a remote, low-vaccination community (those with vaccination levels under 70 per cent of people aged five and over) from Darwin, Alice Springs, Katherine or interstate must wear a mask in public for seven days. This applies whether the person is a resident or a worker.
• Anyone entering remote, low vaccination communities from Darwin, Alice Springs, Katherine or interstate must undertake a rapid antigen test 72 hours before entry from Friday, November 19. A small cohort of workers regularly travelling to those communities will be required to submit to a weekly PCR test (this is the “gold standard” coronavirus test performed in clinics, not done using rapid testing kits).

But he thanked “frontline heroes” working tirelessly during the pandemic and everyone who had been vaccinated to date.

An unvaccinated man in his 20s tested positive to COVID-19 last week, followed by one of his close contacts.

His infection was subsequently traced to a 21-year-old woman who had been in Melbourne.

Mr Gunner said it had taken a long time to piece together the woman’s movements and “there may be unknown close contacts”.

Under lockout rules, fully vaccinated people can “go about life as normal as long as you are masked”, Mr Gunner has said previously, and “if you aren’t fully vaccinated you can only leave home for one of five reasons deemed essential”.

Mr Gunner said that there were pockets of “terrifying complacency” about COVID-19 in the territory and urged people to get vaccinated.

While 80 per cent of all Northern Territorians aged 16 and over have received one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, coverage of the vaccine across the NT is not even.