This was published 5 years ago
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews gave his daily COVID-19 update on Saturday as the state recorded 12 deaths and 466 new cases.
A healthcare worker in the emergency department at Hornsby Hospital has tested positive for COVID-19 and NSW Health in the process of identifying members of the public who may need to self-isolate.
The staff member worked one shift while infectious on August 6, from 11am to midnight, a spokeswoman for the health department said.
"The staff member became unwell after their shift and immediately self-isolated and got tested for COVID-19," she said.
The person was wearing a mask while in contact with patients.
However, NSW Health is currently in the process of identifying members of the public who had contact with the healthcare worker so they can be notified, the spokeswoman said.
A quick update in Sydney before we close the blog for the night - NSW Health has issued an alert for a Bunnings store in the city's west.
Anyone who visited a Bunnings store in Campbelltown this week is being told to monitor for COVID-19 symptoms after an employee tested positive for the virus.
The employee worked at the store from 11am to 7pm on August 4, from 8am to 4pm on August 5 and from 1pm to 3pm on August 6.
NSW Health said the employee was wearing a mask and practicing social distancing during the shifts but that customers who visited the store during these times are urged to monitor for symptoms.
That is all I have for you today everyone! Thanks again for all the comments and tweets as we enter the first weekend of stage four lockdown.
Before I go here is a look back at some of the major developments today:
Man in his 30s one of 12 deaths as Victoria records 466 new cases
NSW records nine new coronavirus cases, including three with no known source
Dan Andrews was having a week from hell. Then Russell Crowe showed up
Ski lifts on Mount Buller and Mount Stirling have been shut, marking an abrupt end to Victoria's ski season and the latest blow to the state's beleaguered tourism industry.
The closing of ski lifts on Mount Buller and Mount Stirling comes as tourism operators report a 95 to 98 per cent loss in revenue due to the pandemic, with some writing off all of 2020, Victorian Tourism Industry Council chief executive Felicia Mariani said.
"It's hard to even begin to understand where to start because the impacts have been so overwhelming — that's really the only word to use," Ms Mariani said.
While the decision seemed sudden, many wondered how Mt Buller had stayed open until now, amid a flurry of rumours that well-heeled Melburnians continued to flock to the mountain in defiance of travel bans and the city's lockdown.
With signs encouraging people to wear a mask, keep their distance, curb their conversations with stallholders and limit shopping to just 30 minutes, the reopening of Carriageworks Farmers Market looked to be a dour affair.
But a long queue of people waited patiently throughout Saturday morning to enter the Blacksmith's Workshop, where 72 stallholders offered a rich variety of fresh food and vegetables, bread, meat and alcohol.
Shopper Kim Shaw believed the social distancing and hygiene protocols "all added up" to create a safe environment. "You're not opening fridges too," she said.
"That's one of the supermarket freak-out points, isn't it?"
Deputy Chief Medical Officer Dr Nick Coatsworth said Australians who are not in lockdown need to reflect on whether visiting multiple venues in one night is the ‘right thing to do’.
The national medical advisor said now was not the time for a pub crawl, because when you visit many places in one night, “you might be the person spreading the virus”.
“We all, as Australians, have to have an eye down to Victoria … in terms of what could happen in our own backyards,” Dr Coatsworth said.
“Whilst it is important for people to feel like their lives are back to the new normal, it’s critically important we’re not going back to old normal.
“It means we have to maintain social distancing, maintain excellent hand hygiene and we have to get tested if we have respiratory symptoms - cough, cold, sore throat.”
Premier Daniel Andrews got a rare vote of confidence this week when Australia’s Hollywood hard man Russell Crowe told his 2.7 million twitter followers the Premier was doing a good job, exhorting Andrews to keep going even if he was “going through hell”.
It certainly was one hell of a week and Rusty’s intervention would have been more welcome for the embattled Premier than that of Jennifer Coate, the retired judge hired by Andrews' government to hold an inquiry into the Melbourne quarantine hotels debacle
As she announced she had delayed the reporting date of her inquiry until November, Coate added, unprompted, that there was no legal reason to suppress public discussion of matters before her investigation.
Coate’s comments blew away any last vestige of political cover for Andrews and his ministers to bat away questions about the quarantine failures that have led to most (if not all) of Melbourne’s deadly COVID-19 second wave. They have also brought a world of political pain down on Andrews and his government.
One of Australia’s leading health bureaucrats says the intensity of the COVID-19 pandemic was ‘taking its toll’ on healthcare workers as infections in that cohort rise.
Deputy Chief Medical Officer Dr Nick Coatsworth said the high number of virus cases among healthcare workers and aged care workers was of “significant concern”.
There are now 998 healthcare workers in Victoria with an active case of COVID-19.
Dr Coatsworth said in his own experience with Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) in Sudan, every day presented a “challenging environment”.
In the early hours of a spring morning almost three years ago, my husband and I welcomed our daughter into the world. Our lives changed forever.
I was fortunate enough to miss the roller coaster of postnatal depression, but even so I needed a tribe for support. My husband was my sidekick, I craved seeing friends, and I welcomed professional advice from midwives, obstetricians and sleep consultants. It was very much a collaborative approach.
For those giving birth this year (and this includes me for the second time), life looks a little different.
It’s no big surprise then that so, too, is the care available.
Dr Colin Walsh, obstetrician and maternal-fetal medicine specialist at Sydney’s North Shore Private and Mater hospitals, says that although this year has been tricky in terms of how best to manage patients, everyone involved in postnatal care has made an enormous effort to modify their services and keep going.
Deputy Chief Medical Officer Dr Nick Coatsworth said that there had been 475 new cases of COVID-19 in the 24 hours up to 12pm on Saturday.
There are now 659 people hospitalised with the virus across Australia, with 53 people in intensive care.
There were nine new cases announced in NSW, with two of those people acquiring the virus overseas and now in hotel quarantine.
Four other people in NSW had acquired the virus locally after close contact with a confirmed COVID-19 case, and three more cases still under investigation.
Dr Coatsworth said that any cases that can't be linked to be an existing outbreaking "create concern", because it means there's community transmission that healthcare authorities don't know about.
"If there are unknown chains of transmission, that's where testing comes into its own," he said.