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Health Minister Greg Hunt and Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly spoke earlier this afternoon, providing an update on the government’s vaccination program.
Watch the press conference in full below:
Thanks so much for joining us today. We’ll be back bright and early tomorrow morning with more up-to-date coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.
But for now, let’s look back on the biggest stories of the day:
NSW has recorded no local cases of COVID-19 for the 29th consecutive day. There were no cases in hotel quarantine either, with 15,695 tests done to 8pm last night.
Queensland recorded no new coronavirus cases on Monday, with just seven cases remaining active across the state.
Health Minister Greg Hunt announced that 142,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine have arrived in Australia. Once the vaccine vials have been checked by the Therapeutic Goods Administration, they can then be distributed as part of the first stage of the rollout.
The Gold Coast University Hospital, which managed the first cluster of cases in January 2020, is expected to receive the first vials of the Pfizer vaccine in Queensland next week.
Stay safe and we hope to have your company again tomorrow.
A fruit shop and a supermarket in the Melbourne suburb of Broadmeadows are now considered exposure sites for February 9, according to the Victorian Chief Health Officer’s daily update.
The Department of Health has said a positive case visited Sacca’s Fruit World, around 16 kilometres north of the Melbourne CBD, between 12.30pm and 1.15pm last Tuesday.
The shop is located inside the Broadmeadows Central shopping centre.
They also visited attended the Woolworths in the same shopping centre between 12.15pm and 12.30pm on February 9.
LONDON - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will this week judge how fast England can exit COVID-19 lockdown but the death toll and hospital admission numbers are still too high, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said on Monday.
“We’ve got to watch the data,” Hancock told Sky News.
“Everybody wants to get out of this as quickly as we safely can, and both as quickly, but also as safely, are important.
“The question is a judgement of how quickly and safely, how quickly we can do that safely. That’s the judgment that we’re making this week, looking at the data, ahead of the prime minister setting out the roadmap, on the 22nd,” he said.
“So these are the judgments that will be made this week.“
Reuters
A Melbourne-based epidemiologist says it is “likely” more COVID-19 cases will emerge in Victoria, with contacts of confirmed positive cases potentially just now showing symptoms.
University of Melbourne’s Nancy Baxter, who also heads the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, said once she realised there had been infectious attendees of the Coburg family function circulating in the community for about a week, she became “a lot more anxious about whether we’re actually going to be out of lockdown on Wednesday”.
“When you think about it, if they got infected on the 6th, they probably weren’t infective for days after that, so then whoever has contracted it from them wouldn’t be infected for more days after that. It would kind of be around now they would be developing symptoms,” Professor Baxter told ABC Melbourne.
“I hate to be the bearer of bad news. But I think over the next day or two when they’re testing all their close and casual contacts, we’re going to have a lot more information.
In today’s episode of our podcast, Please Explain, national editor Tory Maguire and science reporter Liam Mannix discuss the CSL facility in Victoria, where the company is about to start pumping out millions of doses of the Astra Zeneca COVID-19 vaccine.
You can listen to the full episode below.
Victoria’s second international airport is being put forward as a possible site for a remote quarantine base, complete with outdoor cabins for returned travellers, as the state grapples with the fallout from cases in hotel quarantine again leaking into the community.
Avalon Airport boss Justin Giddings says he is waiting to hear back from the state government after submitting a proposal for a facility to be rapidly built on the grounds of the airport, 50 kilometres south-west of Melbourne, which could house upwards of 300 standalone cabins.
The plan would create a quarantine centre similar to that at Howard Springs near Darwin.
Mr Giddings said the plan would involve returned travellers flying into Avalon’s international terminal and walking to nearby quarantine cabins, where people could cook their own meals, clean their own cabins and spend time outside at any time.
Good afternoon, it’s Ashleigh McMillan here. My colleague Craig Butt has finished for the day and is off to enjoy a well-earned break. But I will be bringing you the latest coronavirus updates throughout the afternoon and evening.
Here are some of the key developments of this Monday so far:
NSW has recorded no local cases of COVID-19 for the 29th consecutive day. There were no cases in hotel quarantine either, with 15,695 tests done to 8pm last night.
Queensland recorded no new coronavirus cases on Monday, with just seven cases remaining active across the state.
Health Minister Greg Hunt announced that 142,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine have arrived in Australia. Once the vaccine vials have been checked by the Therapeutic Goods Administration, they can be distributed as part of the first stage of the rollout.
The Gold Coast University Hospital, which managed the first cluster of cases in January 2020, is expected to receive the first vials of the Pfizer vaccine in Queensland next week.
WA Premier Mark McGowan says Western Australia will keep its hard border with Victoria until at least Wednesday when the eastern state’s initial lockdown period is set for review.
“We’ve decided to extend the hard border with Victoria until at least midnight on Wednesday,” he said.
“Victoria is in lockdown until at least that point in time ... so the Chief Health Officer’s advice is that it’s the correct approach, to at least at this point in time, mirror that lockdown.”
There were no new cases of COVID-19 overnight in WA.
Anti-lockdown protesters have clashed with police during a heated exchange at a popular Melbourne shopping strip during day three of the state’s five-day “circuit breaker” coronavirus restrictions.
Video footage of the confrontation shows about a dozen police officers attempting to move on a small group of men and women, many who were not wearing mandatory face masks, at Eaton Mall in Oakleigh on Monday.
The police officers, who can be repeatedly heard asking the rally group to “move on”, attempt to separate the group before one officer pulls out his capsicum spray.
Another officer can be heard telling a man, wearing a grey T-shirt and black cap, to leave the area or risk being arrested.
A continued lockdown for Melbourne would be “dire” for small businesses, who were forced to shut on a weekend they had hoped would ignite the city’s revival, lord mayor Sally Capp says.
“It’s certainly very challenging. The anguish from traders over the weekend is something that we all feel very deeply,” she said.
“Our normal annual city economy is $104 billion. So if you want to break that down, you can see that every day it’s hundreds of millions of dollars [being lost],” Cr Capp told ABC Melbourne Radio 774.
“This weekend was certainly something that traders were looking forward to, as really a sort of breakthrough moment that sense of revival, with the tennis... Valentine’s Day, Lunar New Year, people having reservations, being booked out knowing that there was that energy and vibrancy in the city. Of course, lockdown shocked us all,” Cr Capp said.