As it happened: Victoria records three local COVID-19 cases as Scott Morrison reveals he will receive Pfizer vaccine ‘very soon’

That brings us to the end of an eventful week. I hope you all enjoy your weekend.

A quick reminder of the big stories today:

• Victoria has recorded three new cases of locally acquired COVID-19, all linked to the Holiday Inn outbreak; all three cases are from the same family: a child and both parents who were already in isolation.
• NSW has continued its run of 33 days without community transmission of coronavirus, reporting just two new cases in hotel quarantine; and Queensland has also recorded no new cases in the community or hotel quarantine.
• Prime Minister Scott Morrison says he will be rolling up his sleeve to get a coronavirus vaccine “very, very soon”, flagging he will be vaccinated early in the rollout to boost public confidence.
• Australia’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer Professor Michael Kidd says people should go to trusted medical providers or the health.gov.au website rather than Facebook for vaccine information, after Facebook blocked all news websites yesterday.
• Syringes designed to extract the maximum number of doses from Australia’s shipments of coronavirus vaccines will not be available when the national rollout begins on Monday. Instead, federal Department of Health Secretary Brendan Murphy said low dead space syringes – which are designed to minimise waste in the injection process – were still on order amid a worldwide shortage.
• Victorian residents of Wantirna South/Boronia, Carrum Downs/Langwarrin and St Kilda East/Caulfield areas are all on alert after weak traces of COVID-19 were found in wastewater tests conducted earlier this week. Anyone with symptoms needs to come forward for testing as soon as possible.
• Less than 24 hours after the City of Melbourne cancelled the iconic Moomba festival for the first time in its 66-year-old history, they have announced it is back on.
  

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  Take care, stay safe this weekend and good night.

Some late breaking news: one of the 22 cases linked to Melbourne’s Holiday Inn coronavirus cluster has been admitted to intensive care.

The Department of Health said the patient was in a stable condition in hospital late on Friday afternoon, but did not reveal their age, gender or how the person was linked to the Holiday Inn outbreak.

Another person who was in ICU earlier this week, known publicly for his use of a nebuliser which authorities claim is at the centre of the outbreak, was discharged from hospital on Wednesday.

That brings us to the end of an eventful week. I hope you all enjoy your weekend.

A quick reminder of the big stories today:

• Victoria has recorded three new cases of locally acquired COVID-19, all linked to the Holiday Inn outbreak; all three cases are from the same family: a child and both parents who were already in isolation.
• NSW has continued its run of 33 days without community transmission of coronavirus, reporting just two new cases in hotel quarantine; and Queensland has also recorded no new cases in the community or hotel quarantine.
• Prime Minister Scott Morrison says he will be rolling up his sleeve to get a coronavirus vaccine “very, very soon”, flagging he will be vaccinated early in the rollout to boost public confidence.
• Australia’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer Professor Michael Kidd says people should go to trusted medical providers or the health.gov.au website rather than Facebook for vaccine information, after Facebook blocked all news websites yesterday.
• Syringes designed to extract the maximum number of doses from Australia’s shipments of coronavirus vaccines will not be available when the national rollout begins on Monday. Instead, federal Department of Health Secretary Brendan Murphy said low dead space syringes – which are designed to minimise waste in the injection process – were still on order amid a worldwide shortage.
• Victorian residents of Wantirna South/Boronia, Carrum Downs/Langwarrin and St Kilda East/Caulfield areas are all on alert after weak traces of COVID-19 were found in wastewater tests conducted earlier this week. Anyone with symptoms needs to come forward for testing as soon as possible.
• Less than 24 hours after the City of Melbourne cancelled the iconic Moomba festival for the first time in its 66-year-old history, they have announced it is back on.
  

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  Take care, stay safe this weekend and good night.

On the third floor of a cream-coloured building in Camperdown, a face-masked pharmacist extracts a benign concoction of red dye and water from a glass vial no bigger than a thumbnail as if thousands of lives depended on the task.

But today is just the final dress rehearsal. Come Monday morning, the vials will be filled with Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine and Sydney’s quarantine and border workers will be among the very first Australians to roll up their sleeves to receive the vaccine at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital’s new COVID Vaccination Hub.

Watch a walkthrough of the clinic here:

Half a dozen COVID-19 testing sites have closed early today across Melbourne with the health Department citing the heat as the reason.

The city has just hit its forecast top of 33 degrees, and sites from Dandenong to West Footscray have closed for the rest of the day.

Closed sites due to heat today:

• Monash Health - Carroll Lane, Dandenong - Drive Through, Dandenong
• Banyule Community Health - Greensborough, Greensborough
• Monash Health - IYU Recreation Reserve, Pakenham, Pakenham
• Darebin Arts Centre, Preston
• Wyndham City Council Civic Centre, Werribee
• Shorten Reserve Car Park, West Footscray

It’s not clear at what temperature sites are directed to close. The Department has been approached for response.

G’day readers, Rachael Dexter here again to take you through to the day’s end. Hope you’re enjoying your Friday. What a week it’s been.

On the topic of the weekend, since the end of Victoria’s five-day lockdown on Wednesday, the nation’s borders are returning to some level of normality for travelling Victorians from tomorrow.

As it stands, Victorians are allowed to travel freely into the Northern Territory and NSW. The ACT is enforcing restrictions only on anyone who has been at one of the Victorian Department of Health’s exposure sites at the listed times.

Regional Victorians are able to enter South Australian freely, but those from metropolitan Melbourne are barred from entry until Tuesday (14 days after the last public exposure).

From midnight tonight, Tasmania is reopening for Victorians, and anyone already undergoing quarantine from Victoria will be released. Like the ACT, there are limitations on entering Tasmania if you’ve been caught up in any of the Victorian Department of Health’s exposure sites.

As has been the case in the past, Western Australia is enforcing the strictest limitations on Victorians. Today the state again changed itself advice for Victorians, upgrading travellers to ‘medium risk’, which means you will need to apply for an exemption to enter the state and then
undergo 14 days of quarantine at home and multiple COVID-19 tests.

It’s a similar situation for Queensland, which allows regional Victorians in freely but requires Melburnians to undergo 14 days of quarantine. The Queensland government has also flagged a lifting of these restrictions on February 27.

ICYMI, we’ve launched a new vaccine data dashboard, which tracks how many people around the world have been vaccinated so far and which countries are leading the charge.

Once vaccine doses start being administered in Australia on Monday, we’ll be adding a pane to focus on local progress.

We’re going to keep updating this new vaccine data centre – much like the virus data centre we launched last year.

Our tracker uses the total number of people fully vaccinated as our main metric of success rather than the number of doses administered.

That means the dashboard may look like it is understating the level of progress worldwide, because most vaccines require two doses at least one month apart to achieve their optimum efficacy, and the pace of progress worldwide means most people who have started their course have not yet received their second shot.