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Everyone turned up to today’s press conference! Acting Premier James Merlino, Health Minister Martin Foley, Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton and COVID-19 Commander Jeroen Weimar were all there to announced eased restrictions. You can watch it below.
That’s it for another edition of our free COVID-19 blog.
David Estcourt here bringing you today’s top stories:
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Acting Premier James Merlino has made some of his strongest comments to date criticising the Commonwealth’s vaccine provision to states.
“The Commonwealth made it very clear to all states and territories at the last National Cabinet that we don’t need to make provisions for second doses because they will retain them,” Mr Merlino said on Wednesday afternoon.
“If they can’t do that, then they shouldn’t be publicly scolding states for holding doses back.
“Victorians have turned out in their thousands to get vaccinated, but we can’t maintain this rate without certainty about supply from the Commonwealth.”
The Victorian and federal governments have been trading blows over the vaccine rollout for months as tensions heightened during the lockdown.
The Commonwealth is responsible for providing vaccine doses to state governments.
The Victorian government has announced new coronavirus restrictions for Greater Melbourne and separate rules for regional areas to apply from 11.59pm on Thursday in response to the latest outbreak.
Have a read of Mat’s rolling story keeping track of all the restrictions here.
Announcing the changes, acting Premier James Merlino said the government understood the impact of isolation.
“We know that since the pandemic started, distance has been one of the hardest things to live with, distance from our neighbours, workplaces, places we love and people we love,” he said.
“We know it has been for a reason, keeping our distance. We have kept ourselves and others safe.”
Seoul: North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has made his clearest comments yet about possible food shortages in his country and calling for his people to brace for extended COVID-19 restrictions.
The North’s economy has decayed further amid pandemic border closures, which choked off trade with China, while devastating typhoons and floods decimated crops last year.
Monitors assessing the situation have yet to see signs of mass starvation or major instability, but some analysts say conditions could be aligning for a perfect storm that undercuts food and exchange markets and triggers public panic. The Korea Development Institute, a South Korean government think tank, said last month the North could face food shortages of around a million tonnes this year.
Kim made the comments while opening a major political conference to discuss national efforts to salvage the economy.
Now a bit of analysis from our national science reporter Liam Mannix. Below is an excerpt of his weekly science newsletter Examine. Sign up to get it in your inbox here.
A confession: before COVID-19, I found it strange to see someone wearing a mask on Melbourne’s streets.
It seemed like a symbol of fear in a peaceful place. It seemed ... well, it seemed unnecessary.
The new 75-person capacity cap for entertainment and cultural venues in Melbourne means some won’t open their doors as they had hoped this weekend.
First the good news: Melbourne Theatre Company will push ahead and on Friday bring back the on-hold Lifespan of a Fact, and premiere their production of The Truth (at this capacity, they’re shouldering what may be a considerable loss but at least the shows go on).
And the Heide Museum of Modern will open its doors Friday for an extended season of its well-reviewed Robert Owen survey.
But the National Gallery of Victoria will stay closed for now, its French Impressionism blockbuster ready and waiting on the walls for the lights to come back on.
WA Police Commissioner Chris Dawson has refused to apologise for accessing SafeWA check-in data in relation to a murder and stabbing investigation, saying the actions were lawful and done in exceptional circumstances.
Attorney General John Quigley, on Tuesday, moved to urgently tighten the privacy laws relating to the app’s data after it was revealed police had twice issued warrants to the Department of Health for information relating to the shooting of former Rebels bikie boss Nick Martin at Perth Motorplex in December, and a separate serious stabbing in Victoria Park in March.
It came six months after Health Minister Roger Cook introduced the mandatory policy and assured the public check-in data would be erased after 28 days, and only be accessed by health personnel for the purposes of contact tracing.
Critics have accused Mr Dawson of being short-sighted and undermining the public’s confidence in the app, which has the potential to save lives if another outbreak occurred in WA.
However, Mr Dawson defended his agency’s decision to access the information to find witnesses.
A generation of young people is at risk of being channelled into low-skilled and low-paying jobs, with disrupted learning through the coronavirus pandemic exacerbating socio-economic fault lines in Australia’s education system.
Research from the Paris-based OECD released on Tuesday said home-schooling and greater dependence on virtual classrooms during COVID-19 would probably have a long-lasting impact that would disproportionately affect poorer students.
Every school system in Australia was forced into periods of home teaching, with students often spending days or weeks communicating with their teachers and school mates via Zoom or similar online systems. Melbourne students and their parents have just emerged from another shutdown.
The OECD, in a report into the skills base of member nations, said even before the pandemic there were deep divisions between students from poor backgrounds and those from middle and high-income families.
NSW Health is investigating after a man from Sydney’s east tested positive to COVID-19 on Wednesday, the state’s first local case in 40 days.
The man, in his 60s, works as a driver in a role which includes transporting international air crew.
He had a saliva test on Tuesday which returned as positive, and confirmed by a second PCR test on Wednesday.
“Urgent investigations into the source of the infection and contact tracing are underway, as is genome sequencing,” NSW Health said in a statement.
A number of locations visited by the man in Sydney’s east and north have been identified as potential exposure sites.
The state had previously reported no new local cases on Wednesday as investigations continue into whether a returned traveller caught COVID-19 within a Sydney quarantine hotel.
Melburnians have been permitted to travel to the state’s alpine resorts, provided they have had a COVID-19 test within 72 hours of departing.
The Victorian government seriously considered continuing the ban on Melburnians travelling to the snow given the coronavirus risk.
Following lengthy deliberations, authorities settled on a compromise: lift the restriction on the condition people were tested.
During Wednesday’s press conference, Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton said the risk of spread in alpine snow regions were serious, and described it as a high-risk environment.