This was published 5 years ago

As it happened: SA records three locally acquired COVID-19 cases; Victoria records 16th straight day of no new cases; Australia's death toll sits at 907

Roy Ward, Matt Bungard, Mary Ward, Marissa Calligeros, Latika Bourke, Rachael Dexter and Craig Butt

Updated November 15, 2020 — 11:00pm,first published November 15, 2020 — 7:46am

Summary

South Australia has recorded its first locally acquired coronavirus case in almost three months. The state recorded three locally acquired cases, and one of those who tested positive works in the state's hotel quarantine system.
Travellers heading to WA from South Australia will have to self-quarantine, effective immediately, WA Premier Mark McGowan has announced.
Victoria has recorded its 16th straight day of no new cases and now the state has recorded no mystery cases for two weeks.
NSW is investing another $1.6 billion in its COVID-19 'gold' standard health response. NSW recorded its eighth-straight day of no new cases on Sunday.
Queensland has notched up 62 straight days of no community transmission and has only eight active cases in the state.

Pinned post from 11.00pm on Nov 15, 2020

That's all for the blog

That's all for the blog today. The blog won't be back of Monday morning from 7am, since today's edition will be the last daily one (although the blog format will still be rolled out for big, scheduled news days such as next Sunday when Melbourne's next reopening steps are laid out).

Here are some of the biggest blog days over the past eight months or so:

March 16: As the day unfolded: Australia death toll rises as travel restrictions come into effect

March 22: NSW moves to shut down non-essential services as COVID-19 diagnoses surpass 1000 in Australia (this was the most-read blog day)

March 27: As the day unfolded: Boris Johnson tests positive for COVID-19, Scott Morrison upgrades self-isolation restrictions for travellers

May 8: Scott Morrison eases COVID-19 restrictions on restaurants, cafes under stage one plans to kickstart Australian economy as Australian death toll stands at 97

May 11: Daniel Andrews eases Victorian restrictions as global COVID-19 cases surpass 4 million, Australian death toll stands at 97

July 7: Victoria stage 3 COVID-19 restrictions reimposed on Melbourne, Mitchell Shire Council as state records 191 new cases

August 2: Victoria imposes stage four restrictions including curfew, 5km lockdown limit; NSW battles clusters, Australian death toll jumps to 208

October 26: Melbourne, regional Victoria lockdown restrictions to be eased for retail, hospitality sectors as state records zero COVID-19 cases for first time in more than three months (my personal favourite, since I got to helm the blog on a day there was substantial good news)

That's all from us, for now. Stay safe. Thanks for tuning into the blog or the past eight months.

(As for today's blog, I've mischievously decided to add the names of all the regular bloggers to the byline, in descending order of blog shifts, to reflect how it was a real group effort.)

Latest Posts

10.36pm on Nov 15, 2020

WA Premier Mark McGowan clamps down on relaxed border after outbreak in South Australia

We interrupt these farewells to bring you some late-breaking coronavirus news:

Lauren Pilat reports that travellers heading to WA from South Australia will have to self-quarantine effective immediately after an outbreak in the state forced WA Premier Mark McGowan to tighten the rules on WA's recently relaxed border.

It is the first time in three months that South Australia recorded locally acquired coronavirus cases.

One of those who tested positive works in the state's hotel quarantine system and the discovery has prompted authorities to require mandatory COVID-19 testing of all staff working in SA's quarantine hotels.

Mr McGowan said anyone arriving from South Australia at Perth Airport would now be tested for COVID-19 on arrival and given a direction to self-quarantine for 14 days in a suitable premise. Travellers arriving by car would also be required to be tested within the next 48 hours and had to self-quarantine until results are returned.

"When we announced the new controlled border regime, we said any new community cases in other states or territories would be assessed in detail by the WA Chief Health Officer, to determine if any possible changes to our border controls were necessary," Mr McGowan said.

"These are initial steps the state government is taking to protect all Western Australians, and will be reviewed regularly.

"We will monitor the position in South Australia very closely and will strengthen measures if required. We understand these changes will cause frustration for many people, but these steps are being taken on the best health advice to protect everyone."

The rule change caused chaotic scenes at Perth Airport after the rule changes were decided at an emergency meeting between WA's Police Commissioner, Premier and Chief Health Officer.

Passengers from a Qantas flight to Adelaide from Perth that had just arrived in the city were told to get tested and self-quarantine for 14 days.

People were given the option of flying back to Adelaide on Monday after being told of the changes on arrival.

Passengers due to arrive on a flight later on Sunday were told about the new requirements and given the option to disembark.

Read more: WA Premier Mark McGowan clamps down on relaxed border after outbreak in South Australia

10.32pm on Nov 15, 2020

The daily blog is winding up: message from some of the bloggers

There have been almost 250 coronavirus updates blogs since March, and a lot of Age and Sydney Morning Herald staff have stepped in to look after the blog each day.

Roy Ward holds the record for most blog bylines clocking up 73. Some of the other regular bloggers were Matt Bungard (71), Mary Ward (69), Marissa Calligeros (51), Latika Bourke (50), Rachael Dexter (47) and Craig Butt (36). You can read about some of us here.

There were also some occasional bloggers such as Ashleigh McMillan, Paul Sakkal, Hanna Mills Turbet, Mat Dunckley, David Estcourt, Lynette Erb and Megan Levy. (Sorry if I left anyone off the list).

Today, the blog is finishing up, so here are some messages from a few of the bloggers:

Roy Ward

I've loved every one of the 73 live blogs I've had the pleasure of presenting and I've been in awe of the mastery Craig has over numbers and statistics. His posts and graphs have been one of the foundations of these blogs

I'll be heading back home to The Age Sport from tomorrow onwards and will miss the chance to interact with such a variety of people.

Thanks once more for all the great comments, emails and tweets. I also need to give a special thanks to all the people behind the scenes who helped in so many ways to make this blog the best product it could be.

Take care everyone and bye for now.

Marissa Calligeros

As much as I will miss helming our coronavirus live blog, the fact that it is coming to end is a good thing. It means Victoria is out of the dark days of its second coronavirus wave and the incredibly tough stage four lockdown.

The days are looking brighter as we take more and more steps towards a so-called “COVID normal”. The long days during the second lockdown were marked with anxiety, dread, frustration, and for many, unimaginable grief. They were also marked with incredible resilience and strength.

In the midst of that turmoil, we aimed to bring you the facts each and every day. (We watched the daily COVID numbers like we once checked the weather forecast.) I feel the people of Melbourne 2020 - and particularly the readers of our live blogs - will share a unique connection through our collective experience.

I have never felt more connected to our readers than when I was blogging, reading your comments, emails and messages.

Thank you for turning to us each day for the news and developments. It’s a great privilege to serve you, our readers.

As we venture out of our lockdown bubbles, as we reunite with friends and family, as we pack up the car and hit the road, let’s not forgot what we went through.

We will continue to bring you the news as it happens, and our blog will return on big news days. It won’t be an end to the 5.30am starts for me - I’ll continue to be editing the breaking news behind the scenes in the morning and throughout the day. Sanitise your hands, keep safe and keep looking out for one another.

Craig Butt (I'm running the blog at the moment, so I guess I'd better write one)

It's going to strange, the blog no longer being a regular fixture of our coverage, but it's definitely a good thing it's been getting thinner and thinner each day over the past few weeks. I'd much prefer that than to be facing a precipice of increasing case numbers, deaths and hospitalisations that would be keeping it going for many more months.

I've found it to be a very valuable experience helming these live blogs this year, and when I haven't been blogging, I've been posting a lot of my daily maps, graphs and data analysis to the blog. I'll probably be updating my charts each morning and sending them to the other bloggers over the next few days out of force of habit.

One thing I will definitely miss is all the interaction with readers. I've got a lot of emails and comments from people wondering what I had simmering away in the slow cooker on the mornings I was on the blog, letting me know that a bad pun or light-hearted photo caption I snuck into the blog raised a smile, mentioning something interesting worth including in a post or asking me if I could update one of the graphs I'd seemingly forgotten about. Sometimes, after a day of non-stop grim news, I'd get an email checking to make sure the bloggers were all feeling okay, which was very thoughtful.

I don't want to make it all about the bloggers, though. The blog wouldn't have featured many posts without all the contributions from all our reporters, photographers, graphic artists and videographers, as well as the producers and comment moderators who made the blog was a typo-free and welcoming place.

And the one thing that I don't think any of us were anticipating was how vibrant the comments section would become once the blog went from being a one-off to something resembling a long-running series. With any luck, handles such as 'Splash' and 'News Junkie' will still be popping up in the comments section on the days we run one-off blogs on big news days in the weeks and months ahead - the blogs won't be the same otherwise!

Take care everyone, and stay safe.

9.29pm on Nov 15, 2020

Age editor Gay Alcorn: How we are changing our coronavirus coverage

Here is Age editor Gay Alcorn's message on how the daily blog is finishing up.

Well, that was a week. Noisy, some of it important perhaps, some of it unlikely to matter past the news cycle.

The older I get, the less interested I am in the noise, or at least I yearn for the substance or the meaning behind it. The daily news cycle, as relentless as it is, matters - heck, it’s my job! - and helping Age readers be informed is a privilege.

But my instinct is that many of our subscribers want more from us in an era of too much news, too many opinions. At our best, we cover, sift, analyse and explain as honestly and comprehensively as we can, even though the 24-hour news cycle is a hungry beast.

Day by day, that’s my biggest challenge, to catch time to sit back and take stock, to work out what really matters, what Age readers demand from us. Sometimes, like many of us, my day can disappear in a mirage of furious busy-ness, the urgent crowding out the important.

Living through the coronavirus pandemic has been one of those extraordinary experiences we hope will never be repeated in our lifetimes. Covering it has thrown up all those challenges of relentless news, routine conflict, and the need for deeper coverage.

We published a free, seven-day-a-week blog on coronavirus from March 9 - it ran for almost 100 days. We took an eight-day break in June, naively thinking the worst was behind us. It wasn’t, and from June 21, we have blogged for almost 150 days straight.

This blog has been an unprecedented reporting effort - our previous blogging record was 12 days during the bushfires earlier this year. The blog is where Victorians come to see the daily numbers, our collective mood soaring or falling depending on that figure.

This is where you came to watch Premier Daniel Andrews’ daily press conferences - 120 in a row - as well as those from Prime Minister Scott Morrison and other state leaders. This is where our data journalist Craig Butt could present the numbers in ways that made sense. How were we tracking compared with our targets? Where were our clusters? What was happening in aged care and in hospitals? Coronavirus has highlighted just how vital data journalism can be.

Journalism is expensive and we need subscribers to support it, but we decided to allow free access to our coronavirus blog. That was an easy decision - we have an overriding duty to our community and the pandemic is of huge public interest. Every Victorian deserved access to reliable and timely information and reader response has been enormous. The blog is where we have gathered and shared our views and experiences. On some days, the blog received 3000 comments from readers.

So it is with mixed feelings that I let you know that Sunday will be our last daily coronavirus blog for now. Victoria has had 16 days of zero coronavirus cases in a row - hooray! - and while interest in the blog remains, fewer are checking in as the urgency of the crisis lessens a little. We will bring it back for big days - the next is November 22 when further easing of restrictions are due - and if anything changes. Given the way this year has gone, anything can happen.

9.23pm on Nov 15, 2020

Sydney Morning Herald editor Lisa Davies: Time for a change in our coronavirus coverage

Here is the message from Sydney Morning Herald editor Lisa Davies on how the blog is finishing up:

On February 27, Prime Minister Scott Morrison declared the coronavirus would become a global pandemic, as he also extended Australia’s ban on visitors from China. The worldwide surge of COVID-19 cases had Australia’s leadership bracing for the worst. It was also the day we ran our first live blog of the crisis, such was the high demand from our readers for timely information about the unfolding situation.

That was almost 10 months ago. For a couple of weeks, we had reporters at the helm of the blog just on weekdays. But on March 9, we began daily live coverage that ran for almost 100 days straight. We took an eight-day break in June, but by the 21st it was clear the second wave was striking Victoria.

NSW had begun the process of slowly reopening, but the developments in all states - especially Victoria - were so significant that we kept our live blog going and that has been 147 days of straight coverage.

For readers of both The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, there’s no doubt the dynamic updates have been enormously useful. We try to keep them engaging and relevant, we have added the live streams of state and national leaders’ press conferences and sent alerts to people’s mobile phones for major developments.

Readers have told us they’ve enjoyed the sense of community from being able to share thoughts with others in the comments section. The blogs garnered sometimes upwards of 3,000 comments a day - and we’ve loved hearing from you all.

From the main reporters who have run these blogs, it has been an extraordinary commitment - shout-out to Melbourne-based Roy Ward, who clocked up 73 bylined blogs, closely followed by Sydney reporters Matt Bungard (71), Mary Ward (69) and our tireless London-based breaking news reporter Latika Bourke (50).

These numbers are slightly eye-watering, but our coronavirus blogs have been viewed more than 77 million times on the Herald website since March 15, with nearly 30 million of those pageviews from subscribers or regular readers.

The data centre, designed by Mark Stehle and Soren Fredericksen, has been viewed close to 3 million times with readers spending an average of 2 minutes 20 seconds exploring the data to find out how the virus was affecting where they live.

This Sunday afternoon, we will stop our daily COVID-19 live coverage. It seems like the right time, given Victoria’s stunning rebound and the tiny number of cases being detected elsewhere in Australia. You can, however, still sign up to our Coronavirus Update newsletter and, of course, we’ll fire up the blog again if warranted, but right now we look forward to bringing you an increasingly wider variety of stories to pique your interest. The ongoing contests - for power in the United States, and glory in the State of Origin - are just two. NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet will also hand down the state budget next week when we'll see the government's strategy for emerging from the COVID-induced recession. You won't want to miss that.

Read more: Time for a change in our coronavirus coverage

9.18pm on Nov 15, 2020

The daily coronavirus blog is winding down

In case you haven't heard the announcement, today is the last time for the foreseeable future that we will be running the daily coronavirus updates blog.

When you load up The Age or Sydney Morning Herald website from around 7am tomorrow morning, it will be the first time in months there will not be a 'Coronavirus Pandemic LIVE' icon somewhere on the homepage. (There will still be one-off blogs on big-ticket days, such and next Sunday when Melbourne's next step out of lockdown will be detailed).

It's getting to that time of day where the blog usually winds down, but given this will be the last one in the innings there are a few more farewell messages than usual. I'm going to start posting them now.

8.47pm on Nov 15, 2020

Response to South Australia's new hotel quarantine-linked cases will be different from Victoria's response earlier this year: epidemiologist

South Australia's three new locally acquired coronavirus cases, one of which is a hotel quarantine worker, do not present the same potential to spark a second wave in the state as Victoria's hotel quarantine breaches did earlier this year, Deakin University epidemiology chair Catherine Bennett has said.

"Victoria had about 10 hotel guards who contracted coronavirus from their workplaces in quick succession, probably going home to large families, with SA it's hopefully not on the same scale," she said.

South Australia recorded three locally acquired coronavirus cases for the first time in almost three months on Sunday - a woman in her 80s who presented at the emergency department of Lyell McEwin Hospital in northern Adelaide on Friday and later tested positive for the virus, and two of her family members, one of whom works in the state's hotel quarantine system.

The state's Chief Health Officer Nicola Spurrier said the three were part of a large, tight-knit family and that other family members worked in high-risk areas such as aged care, health care, the corrections system and the mining sector.

Professor Bennett said it was a good sign that SA Health was immediately following up with contacts of the family, adding that health authorities should be casting the net as far as contacts of contacts, encouraging as many people to get tested for the virus as possible.

"The lesson from Melbourne is that you have to follow up contact tracing incredibly aggressively and isolate as many close contacts from now, even if it is not known if they have been exposed to the virus," she said.

She said after the initial infection control breaches in Melbourne quarantine hotels earlier year, Victorian health authorities did not react with the same level of urgency that their South Australian counterparts showed on Sunday.

7.39pm on Nov 15, 2020

South Korea reports eighth straight day of triple-digit increases in coronavirus cases

South Korea reported 208 new coronavirus cases on Saturday, marking the eighth straight day of triple-digit increases, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said on Sunday.

That was slightly higher than the previous day's 205 new infections and the highest since early September.

Of the cases, 176 were locally acquired and 32 imported. Nearly 70 per cent of the locally acquired cases were from Seoul and Gyeonggi province, a densely populated area near the capital.

On Saturday, President Moon Jae-in urged authorities and local governments to raise their awareness of the spread of the coronavirus, reinforcing thorough supervision of safety guidelines such as mandatory mask wearing.

South Korea began fining people who fail to wear masks in public on Friday, as the nation's daily infections continued to creep higher.

The latest tally takes the country's total infections to 28,546, with 493 deaths, according to the KDCA.

Reuters

6.45pm on Nov 15, 2020

WA records four new coronavirus cases, all returned travellers

By Lauren Pilat

International travellers continue to be the biggest risk to Western Australia as the state records another four cases overnight, all returning from overseas, Premier Mark McGowan says.

The new cases come as WA switched from a 'hard' to a 'controlled border' this weekend, with more than 2000 people having already returned to the state after eight months of being separated from family.

The three West Australians and one Queenslander who returned positive test results are all in hotel quarantine.

Mr McGowan said those results proved international travellers returning home continued to be WA’s biggest risk.

"Western Australia takes back around 1025 Australians from overseas per week ... we quarantine those people, we test those people, but it’s obviously the biggest risk to the state," he said.

"The quarantine arrangements is the right way to go, making sure anyone returning from overseas has to quarantine is the right way to go."

Read more: WA records four new COVID cases, McGowan says returning overseas travellers still state's 'biggest risk'

6.35pm on Nov 15, 2020

Mandatory testing for hotel quarantine staff after positive SA case

By Craig Butt and Angus Thompson

South Australia has recorded its first locally acquired coronavirus case in almost three months, and one of those who tested positive works in the state's hotel quarantine system.

The discovery has prompted authorities to require mandatory COVID-19 testing of all staff working in the state's quarantine hotels. South Australia's Chief Health Officer Nicola Spurrier said the mandatory measure was likely an Australian first.

In NSW no locally acquired cases were diagnosed in the 24 hours to 8pm on Saturday, with nine cases reported in overseas travellers in hotel quarantine.

In what she described as "troubling news for the people of South Australia", Professor Spurrier confirmed there were four new cases on Sunday, three of them locally acquired.

"This is an example of community transmission. And it's a sort of thing I have been talking about for some time that although we can get rid of the virus for a period of time, in South Australia, there was still the risk of reintroduction," Professor Spurrier said.

Read more: Mandatory testing for hotel quarantine staff after positive SA case