NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian is due to address the media at 11am, around the same time the state's daily coronavirus numbers are expected.
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews is still giving his daily press conference. You can watch either video below. You may need to click "don't play" on the video you do not want to watch, depending on your settings.
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NSW Health is still looking for a link for a coronavirus case in a western Sydney man without a known source identified last week, which reset Queensland's clock for reopening its state border.
"They're doing the genomic testing and I will allow Health to reveal what they have investigated there but we haven't given up on finding a link to that case," Premier Gladys Berejiklian told reporters on Monday. The man's infection was the only local case recorded in the state in the past seven days.
The Premier said the health advice was that declining testing numbers in the state could be due to a number of factors, including people being healthier in springtime, but she continued to be concerned about complacency.
"We can't really measure the extent of complacency, but I do feel there is too much complacency out there at the moment," she said.
She added that two days of zero cases did not mean no one in the state was transmitting the virus, warning low levels of the virus could still be circulating.
"That's the fear and that's why we're still undertaking the various water treatment testing [and] we're making sure that we encourage people to come forward and get tested with even the mildest of symptoms."
Premier Andrews is trying to explain the line authorities are walking between penalising people for breaking COVID-19 restrictions, while not disincentivising people from coming forward to get tested or to be truthful with contact tracers.
The Premier announced a new near $5000 fine for people found to be congregating in groups in private residences.
But he has also said that having a person be truthful about their whereabouts was worth more than $5000, conceding that not everyone who was revealed to have broken rules would be fined.
"Their diagnosis and their story about who they have been in contact with is worth infinitely more than $5,000. That has all been the view. I know that seems counter-intuitive," he said.
Mr Andrews said that if the families involved in the Hallam-Casey outbreak had been fined the cluster would not have been brought under control."If we hadn't got that information, well, that's not 44 cases. That is... it's away."
Victoria's hotel quarantine program gave primacy to logistics and compliance, rather than to public health.
The final day of Victoria's inquiry into the failed program is hearing closing submissions from the inquiry's lawyers.
Counsel assisting, Rachel Ellyard, said the first thoughts of those who were given a mere 36 hours to set-up hotel quarantine from March 27 was whether the state had enough rooms in hotels.
She cited the evidence of Premier Daniel Andrews, who agreed that "having the rooms in place gave him confidence that everything else could be done."
Ms Ellyard also referred to the first phone call made out of National Cabinet on March 27.
Department of Premier and Cabinet Secretary Chris Eccles made his first phone call to the Department of Jobs boss because the first thought was finding accommodation.
Once hotel quarantine was announced by National Cabinet, Ms Ellyard said "everyone assumed they would have to do it" and it was to authorities' credit that they were able to establish a program from scratch.
Ms Ellyard said though the program was run under the auspices of the Health Department, the scheme never got past an initial focus on logistics and compliance "at the expense of public health."
The upper management of Operation Soteria, the name given to the management team of hotel quarantine, and senior Health Department personnel were "disproportionately focused on questions of compliance, control and logistical matters," Ms Ellyard said.
Ms Ellyard said the transfer of the program to the Health Department from the Jobs Department within the first 24 hours, "should have been a reminder to everyone this was always meant to be a public health response...the evidence suggests...that focus was always underdone."
The lawyer also referred to the decision to side-line the appointment of the Chief Health Officer as the state controller who had oversight of Victoria's overall response to COVID-19.
Under Victoria's emergency management plan, Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton is supposed to take the role as state controller.
Health Department officials instead chose senior department emergency management personnel, deciding that Mr Sutton wouldn't have enough time to fulfil the role given his jobs as the public face of the pandemic.
The decision to appoint someone who wasn't a health professional to be in charge of a response to a health emergency, Ms Ellyard said, contributed to the perception that hotel quarantine was fundamentally a logistics and enforcement model, rather than a public health scheme.
Premier Daniel Andrews has denied the Victorian government is chasing an eradication strategy.
Ms Mikakos, who resigned as Health Minister over the weekend, not long tweeted out: "We are well on the way to eradication" in response to today's low numbers.
But the Premier has just curtly shut that down when asked about it in his press conference.
"I have answered this question many, many times. That is not the strategy," he said.
"The strategy is to suppress this virus and that's the National Cabinet decision."
NSW has recorded a second consecutive day of zero cases, Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced on Monday morning.
Speaking at the site of a new emergency services training facility in western Sydney, the Premier again warned against complacency, noting the state only recorded "about 6400" tests during the reporting period.
"Yes, it's the weekend and we expect a dip [in testing numbers], but can I please encourage everybody not to get complacent," she said.
"Make sure whenever you are out and about ... that everybody is socially distanced, and make sure also if you're with the family in school holidays, if you're at a venue or enjoying the outdoors, please note the threat of the virus is still around us.
"The only reason why we've done well is because everybody has been careful; everybody has been following the health warnings. I don't want to see us lulled into a false sense of security."
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has flagged an initiative to be announced later this week in which people in high-risk industries such as aged care and hospitals will be "strongly encouraged" to be part of a testing program.
But Mr Andrews said he didn't think the state would need the powers to compel people to be tested against their will.
"We will strongly encourage people working ... maybe not everybody but a portion of the workforce, for instance, working in a particular setting, to be part of the testing program, and that serves three purposes," he said.
"One – you find virus if it's there. Two – you validate that the virus isn't. And thirdly – so you can lock down, you can support people and have them isolated if they've got it."
The Victorian government has announced a targeted coronavirus testing program for high-risk areas and workplaces.
Rapid response testing teams have been deployed to manufacturing and logistics industries in Melbourne' southeast, where there have been higher case numbers.
In the past 14 days, there have been more than 11,000 tests in Casey and 5200 tests in Dandenong.
Rideshare and food delivery drivers are among the workforces being encouraged to get tested, regardless of symptoms.
A COVID-19 saliva test pilot started on Friday, in partnership with the Doherty Institute, in Bendigo, Dandenong and the Melbourne CBD, to help understand the logistics of mass testing in high-risk workplaces.
"We've tested over 1000 police staff across Bendigo, Spencer Street Station as part of the surveillance to see if there were any levels of the virus circulating in those areas. Of that saliva, we found one positive case in Dandenong Police Station," said deputy secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Jeroen Weimar.
"That case was confirmed and we've undertaken the police contact tracing of those individuals. It shows again the importance of ongoing development of testing and we will have more to say during the course of the week."
There are 200 testing sites in Victoria. New priority locations will be identified if clusters – or areas with lower testing rates – emerge.
Low testing numbers could be an obstacle to removes more restrictions in Victoria, according to Premier Daniel Andrews.
Although there are just five new cases to report today, there were only 6807 tests processed over the past day.
Mr Andrews said he didn't think new case numbers would hold the state back but low testing numbers could.
"What could be a challenge for us is if we don't see people coming forward and getting tested and if we start to have doubts about whether we've got the most complete picture, that can be a real challenge," he said.
There have been 164,000 Victorians tested over the past two weeks.
"That's the equivalent of one in 40 of all of our citizens coming forward to get tested over that two-week period," said Jeroen Weimar, a former departmental secretary who is now responsible for the state's testing strategy.
Victoria's hotel quarantine program failed, not because of bad faith or corruption, but due to a multitude of decisions, actions and inaction.
In the inquiry's final day of closing submissions, counsel assisting the inquiry Tony Neal, QC, said authorities had a mere 36 hours to set up the program from scratch.
"The circumstances facing Victoria were anything but ordinary and an extraordinary ask was made of those who were tasked to develop the program," he said.
"An enormous immediate, unenviable burden was placed on those in public service to establish not one but a succession of infection control facilities in buildings clearly not designed for quarantine purposes."
Mr Neal said there was no suggestion those who set up the program did so without the best of intent and to the best of their ability.
"Bad faith or corruption is not what the evidence shows," he said.
"Yet it is true that the hastily assembled program failed at two locations within approximately 2½ months and with disastrous consequences."
Mr Neal said: "A multitude of decision, actions and inaction, many of which compounded the effect of the other, ultimately expressed itself in the outbreaks which subverted the very reason for the existence of a hotel quarantine program."
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMimwFodHRwczovL3d3dy50aGVhZ2UuY29tLmF1L25hdGlvbmFsL2Nvcm9uYXZpcnVzLXVwZGF0ZXMtbGl2ZS1tZWxib3VybmUtcmVzdHJpY3Rpb25zLWVhc2UtbnN3LXNlZXMtbm8tbmV3LWNhc2VzLWRlYXRoLXRvbGwtc3RhbmRzLWF0LTg3MC0yMDIwMDkyOC1wNTV6czEuaHRtbNIBmwFodHRwczovL2FtcC50aGVhZ2UuY29tLmF1L25hdGlvbmFsL2Nvcm9uYXZpcnVzLXVwZGF0ZXMtbGl2ZS1tZWxib3VybmUtcmVzdHJpY3Rpb25zLWVhc2UtbnN3LXNlZXMtbm8tbmV3LWNhc2VzLWRlYXRoLXRvbGwtc3RhbmRzLWF0LTg3MC0yMDIwMDkyOC1wNTV6czEuaHRtbA?oc=5
2020-09-28 00:00:00Z
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