Summary
- A man in his 80s has died of coronavirus in Victoria. His death takes the statewide toll to 20 and the nationwide toll to 103.
- A total of 20 new coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Victoria, marking the eighth straight day of double-digit increases. Ten new cases have been confirmed in New South Wales, all of them in returned travellers in hotel quarantine.
- Victoria's state government has announced it will be publishing a list of the Melbourne suburbs that are coronavirus hotspots.
- NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has reiterated her advice for people to "rethink any travel to Melbourne whatsoever", although she says it is unlikely her state will close its borders.
- Tennis world number one Novak Djokovic and his wife have tested positive for coronavirus.
Summary of today's main coronavirus news updates
It's about midday and the blog has been live for four hours, so now seems like a good time to summarise the key updates from this morning:
- A man in his 80s has died of coronavirus in Victoria, bringing the state's death toll from the virus to 20. Nationwide there have been 103 deaths from coronavirus since the start of the outbreak.
- A total of 30 new coronavirus cases have been confirmed nationwide today: 20 in Victoria and 10 in New South Wales.
- Of the 20 new cases in Victoria, seven are linked to known outbreaks, one is an overseas traveller in hotel quarantine, nine were detected through routine testing (which means the source of the infection is not yet apparent) and three are currently under investigation.
- All 10 of the new cases in New South Wales are returned overseas travellers in hotel quarantine.
- No new coronavirus cases have been recorded in Queensland for the seventh day in a row.
- This afternoon, Victoria's Health Department will be publishing a list of Melbourne suburbs that have experienced an increase in coronavirus cases in recent days. Six local government areas - Hume, Brimbank, Moreland, Darebin, Casey and Cardinia - have been identified as coronavirus hotspots.
- NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has reiterated her advice for people to "rethink any travel to Melbourne whatsoever", although she says it is unlikely her state will close its borders.
- Health Minister Greg Hunt has said he believes large anti-racism protests held in Australian cities two weeks ago led to a relaxation of community attitudes towards social distancing, which is to blame for the recent spike in cases.
- Victoria's Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton said this morning that so far the COVIDSafe app had not identified anyone that contact tracers hadn’t already uncovered through the manual process.
- And there are currently 397 comments on this blog. I wonder if we will reach 1000 comments like yesterday...
Latest updates
Victorian government requests military support to help manage hotel quarantine
By Dana McCauley, Rob Harris and Sumeyya Ilanbey
The Victorian government has requested military support to help manage its COVID-19 outbreak, including the quarantine hotels where security guards have been infected and taken the virus home to their families.
Multiple senior Victorian and federal government sources confirmed the request had been made for military assistance.
Defence officials will meet with Victorian health authorities on Wednesday afternoon to finalise details of the plan to deploy military personnel on the ground in Melbourne, to assist with emergency management, planning and logistics support.
There are already 28 Australian Defence Force personnel assisting with the pandemic response in Victoria, including 12 who are involved in planning support, the department said in a statement on Wednesday.
The link to the story below does not include any additional information at this stage, but will be updated once more details come to hand.
Woolworths to reintroduce product limits in Victoria
By Dominic Powell
Woolworths will reinstate product limits for a number of items at its Victorian stores due to a spike in demand over the past 24 hours as concerns over a coronavirus outbreak in the state escalate.
Toilet paper, hand sanitiser, paper towel, flour, sugar, pasta, mince meat, long-life milk, eggs and rice will be return to their two per person limit at all Woolworths’ Victorian stores from Wednesday afternoon.
The company said it was a preventative move made in response to “significantly elevated demand”.
The supermarket's managing director Claire Peters assured customers stores would remain open and the company had plenty of stock in its warehouses.
“While we have healthy stock levels to draw on, we’re taking this precautionary step to help prevent excessive buying and support appropriate social distancing in our Victorian stores,” she said.
“We have more than enough product for all of our customers if we all just buy what we need in our weekly shop.”
Woolworths will look to wind back its limits as soon as it can, she said. No product limits are being put in place outside of Victoria at this time.
The airline that has flown the most passengers during the coronavirus pandemic
By Craig Platt
Qatar Airways is now the world's largest airline based on an industry metric based on the distance travelled by paying passengers.
The airline has now flown 50 million kilometres and 1.8 million passengers on more than 15,000 flights during the crisis.
Not only did Qatar become the world's largest airline based on this measure in April, it accounted for a 17.6 per cent of all passenger kilometres worldwide for the month. Previously it wasn't even in the top 10.
Qatar Airways flew 45 per cent of international travellers to and from Australia in April.Credit:iStockphoto
Qatar Airways also became the only international carrier from the region to continue regular flights into Australia as other airlines grounded their fleets due to travel restrictions. Key rival Emirates suspended its Australian routes on March 25, resuming flights to some cities on May 21.
Delays for drive-through tests continue in Melbourne
By Rachael Dexter
The Melbourne Showgrounds will become a makeshift coronavirus testing site, as health authorities urge people who want to be tested to seek alternatives to overwhelmed drive-through sites in shopping centres.
The wait to be tested at some large shopping centres has been as high as three hours this week, with demand increasing amid mounting concern about new cases in hotspot areas.
There were long queues at the reopened pop-up testing centre at the Bunnings in Footscray on Wednesday morning.Credit:Joe Armao
More than 100 cars were turned away from Chadstone Shopping Centre on Wednesday morning not long after it opened for the day at 9am.
“I got there at about 7.50 and they kicked everyone out at 8.40,” one person told The Age.
The map below shows the location of coronavirus testing sites in Victoria:
Man dies of coronavirus in Victoria, where 20 new COVID-19 cases are confirmed
There are a series of blog posts in today's blog summarising the daily coronavirus numbers for Victoria, which can get a bit disjointed.
The article below summarises the breakdown of the 20 new cases confirmed in Victoria today.
Summary of today's main coronavirus news updates
It's about midday and the blog has been live for four hours, so now seems like a good time to summarise the key updates from this morning:
- A man in his 80s has died of coronavirus in Victoria, bringing the state's death toll from the virus to 20. Nationwide there have been 103 deaths from coronavirus since the start of the outbreak.
- A total of 30 new coronavirus cases have been confirmed nationwide today: 20 in Victoria and 10 in New South Wales.
- Of the 20 new cases in Victoria, seven are linked to known outbreaks, one is an overseas traveller in hotel quarantine, nine were detected through routine testing (which means the source of the infection is not yet apparent) and three are currently under investigation.
- All 10 of the new cases in New South Wales are returned overseas travellers in hotel quarantine.
- No new coronavirus cases have been recorded in Queensland for the seventh day in a row.
- This afternoon, Victoria's Health Department will be publishing a list of Melbourne suburbs that have experienced an increase in coronavirus cases in recent days. Six local government areas - Hume, Brimbank, Moreland, Darebin, Casey and Cardinia - have been identified as coronavirus hotspots.
- NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has reiterated her advice for people to "rethink any travel to Melbourne whatsoever", although she says it is unlikely her state will close its borders.
- Health Minister Greg Hunt has said he believes large anti-racism protests held in Australian cities two weeks ago led to a relaxation of community attitudes towards social distancing, which is to blame for the recent spike in cases.
- Victoria's Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton said this morning that so far the COVIDSafe app had not identified anyone that contact tracers hadn’t already uncovered through the manual process.
- And there are currently 397 comments on this blog. I wonder if we will reach 1000 comments like yesterday...
COVIDSafe app hasn’t assisted Victoria yet
By Ben Grubb and Michael Fowler
It’s been almost two months since the federal government released its COVIDSafe contact-tracing app. Likened to “sunscreen” by Prime Minister Scott Morrison, the app cost $2 million to make and has attracted more than 6 million downloads.
So how is it fairing in identifying potential contacts of those confirmed to have been infected with coronavirus?
Victoria's Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton said this morning that so far the app had not identified anyone who contact tracers hadn’t already uncovered through the manual process.
Professor Sutton said there had been 30 cases out of Victoria’s 1884 coronavirus cases where the app’s data had been downloaded by contact tracers.
“But as we go to a more movement of people and, you know, an opening up and a lessening of restrictions, the app will be more and more important.”
Professor Sutton attributed not needing the app in cases so far to people’s good memory in identifying close contacts.
“Our contact tracers go through a really thorough process,” he said. “In a sense it’s encouraging that people who are identifying their contacts can remember everyone that they have been in contact with for 15 minutes or more.
“I think it’s also a sign that almost all of the close contacts, if not all of the close contacts, are those people who are known in the network of cases - people who are the household contacts, the extended family contacts, close friends.
“So they know their contact details, they know their names. It’s not about walking past someone or standing in line with someone who you haven’t had an existing relationship with.”
Protests led to a relaxation of attitudes: Health Minister Greg Hunt
By Mary Ward
Health Minister Greg Hunt has said he believes large anti-racism protests held in Australian cities two weeks ago led to a relaxation of community attitudes towards social distancing, which is to blame for the recent spike in cases.
Victoria recorded another 20 cases today, 19 of which were locally acquired.
"Many Australians have said, 'Gosh, if it's okay for 10,000 people to congregate and huddle together, surely it would be okay for 10 in my family,'" Mr Hunt said.
"And the message is it was never okay for that protest to have gone ahead, not because of the subject matter – noble, powerful, important – but because of the fact that two and a half weeks later, we have had an outbreak in Victoria."
Protesters at the Black Lives Matter rally in Melbourne on June 6.Credit:Chris Hopkins
There have been four coronavirus cases diagnosed in people who attended the Black Lives Matter protest in Melbourne, although none are understood to have contracted the virus at the protest.
Instead, the Andrews government has been attributing the spike in Melbourne cases to large family gatherings.
Asked if the federal government had failed to adequately communicate coronavirus safety information to families who do not speak English, Mr Hunt denied such a suggestion.
He said federal government consultants had been involved with more than 4000 consultations with migrant communities "in different shapes and forms", produced fact sheets in 63 languages which had attracted more than 850,000 page views on their website.
"Every day, on every front we are working harder. We're encouraging the Victorian government to do more on the ground [and] we're offering our support, but ... we have been a world leader."
Melbourne's quarantine hotels to get more health workers as new virus cases emerge
By Clay Lucas and Chloe Booker
Hotels quarantining returned travellers in Melbourne will be allocated more healthcare workers after a series of coronavirus infections among security guards and hotel staff.
A bag left in a corridor at the Rydges on Swanston marked "infectious waste".
It follows outbreaks at two hotels – the Stamford Plaza in Little Collins Street and the Rydges on Swanston in Carlton.
One security guard who worked at the Rydges hotel, Sebastian Porter, said he had not been properly briefed on hygiene protocols when first asked to work at the site.
The security firm that employed him disputed his claims, but Mr Porter's concerns mirror those raised by another guard who worked at the hotel, Andrew Buntine, who said last week that hygiene protocols were not clear and some staff were poorly briefed.
Victoria the exception to Australia's 'stable state': Health Minister Greg Hunt
Health Minister Greg Hunt has said Australia is "as well prepared as any nation in the world" to continue to stop the spread of coronavirus, although Melburnians must be diligent in light of Victoria's recent spike in cases.
"We are facing a challenge here in Melbourne," he told reporters on Wednesday.
"Whilst in seven states and territories we have largely achieved a very stable state, at the moment, there is a spike."
Health Minister Greg HuntCredit:Alex Ellinghausen
Mr Hunt warned the cases "could spike further", encouraging all Australians to come forward for testing, maintain social distancing and download the COVIDSafe app.
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2020-06-24 04:27:00Z
CBMimQFodHRwczovL3d3dy5zbWguY29tLmF1L25hdGlvbmFsL2Nvcm9uYXZpcnVzLXVwZGF0ZXMtbGl2ZS1ub3Zhay1kam9rb3ZpYy10ZXN0cy1wb3NpdGl2ZS1mb3ItY292aWQtMTktd29ybGR3aWRlLWNhc2VzLXBhc3MtOS0xLW1pbGxpb24tMjAyMDA2MjQtcDU1NWowLmh0bWzSAQA
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