Latest posts
‘Every state should learn from NSW’: Treasurer
By Josh Dye
Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has said the timing for Victoria’s latest lockdown was “devastating” for businesses.
“Small businesses like restaurants were expecting a bumper weekend with Valentine’s Day, Chinese New Year and people going to the tennis,” he told the Today show.
“I spoke to one restauranteur that it cost him $50,000 in food (which he had to throw out) and tens of thousands of dollars in wages because he had chefs preparing food for the weekend.“
“It has dented confidence as well.“
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
Mr Frydenberg said “every state should learn from NSW”.
“It comes down to contact testing, contact tracing, having a very good system in place and no doubt Victoria has made improvements after the devastating second wave, but NSW is the gold standard because they haven’t had a [second] statewide lockdown.“
He said the JobKeeper wage subsidy “needs to end” on March 31.
“Every dollar we spend on this program is a borrowed dollar,” he said.
Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine gets approval in Japan
Japan issued its first approval for a vaccine against the coronavirus Sunday, saying it would use the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to begin inoculating frontline health care workers this week.
Officials plan to first vaccinate a select group of health care workers who will then administer the shots to other medical professionals.
The vaccine will be rolled out to the elderly and high-risk populations by late spring, according to plans published by the health ministry.
But Japan is unlikely to have its entire population vaccinated before it hosts the Olympic Games this summer, and it has said athletes and other attendees will not be required to be vaccinated beforehand.
New York Times
Victoria’s Liberal opposition says Andrews needs to ‘go to NSW and get help’ on quarantine
By Marissa Calligeros
There are renewed calls for quarantine facilities to be in regional areas in Victoria, with Professor Mike Toole - an epidemiologist at the Burnet Institute - suggesting Avalon, Bendigo and Ballarat as possible alternatives.
Victoria has paused all international arrivals amid the Holiday Inn outbreak which has sparked the state’s five-day, hard lockdown.
But Victoria’s shadow health minister Georgie Crozier says NSW has shown that quarantine facilities can work in the CBD.
“Daniel Andrews has to admit he’s got it wrong and he needs to go to NSW and get help,” Ms Crozier told Melbourne station 3AW this morning.
“They’re doing it right, they’ve been able to manage this... we have not, we have failed time and time again.”
‘Quick out of the blocks’: Qld Health pounces on Melbourne visitors
By Stuart Layt and Matt Dennien
Many of the 1500 people linked to the current Melbourne cluster who travelled to Queensland have now left the state, Queensland Health has confirmed.
Queensland Health confirmed on Saturday that all of the approximately 1500 people connected to exposure sites at Melbourne Airport before travelling into the state have now been contacted and told to get tested and quarantine in their own residences for 14 days.
Three travellers from Greater Melbourne were turned around at Gold Coast Airport on the weekend.Credit:Shutterstock
A Queensland Health spokeswoman confirmed on Sunday that “a lot” of the travellers had already left Queensland as they were not residents, although she couldn’t confirm the exact number.
Extra tracers were brought in to help contact the cohort as soon as possible, and Queensland Treasurer Cameron Dick said they had done an excellent job in locating all of those involved in the current situation.
‘Clearly there’s communication problems’: AMA takes aim at Victoria’s failing quarantine system
By Marissa Calligeros
The Australian Medical Association has taken aim at Victoria’s hotel quarantine system, which Premier Daniel Andrews recently lauded as the best in the country.
“It is really frustrating that some of the clinical expertise and the hundreds of hours that a multidisciplinary team has put in, in terms of healthcare worker infection prevention, to come up with some excellent recommendations ... have not been listened to and have not been implemented,” the AMA’s Sarah Whitelaw told Nine’s Today show a short time ago.
“Clearly there’s communication problems between the Department of Health and COVID Quarantine Victoria which needs to be fixed before we go forward,” Dr Whitelaw said.
“We made a lot of improvements in Victoria ... [but] we’re not clearly not ready to handle the risk that quarantine poses under the current system. We’ve got some improvements to make.“
Victoria has paused all international arrivals amid the Holiday Inn outbreak which has sparked the snap, five-day lockdown.
When asked about the success of NSW’s quarantine program, which is accommodating more than 3000 returned travellers each week, Dr Whitelaw said “picking up another state’s model and copying it wholesale is probably not the complete answer”.
“At the moment Australia is vulnerable to any of the state’s quarantine programs. It doesn’t matter if your state is great. What matters is what happens all around Australia. And we’re all left vulnerable if one quarantine system fails,” she said.
Recap: Melbourne’s current list of COVID-19 exposure sites
Here is the current list of locations in Melbourne that are being classed as tier one exposure sites by the state’s health department. A tier one exposure site is somewhere that was visited for a considerable length of time by someone who later tested positive for the virus.
There have no been no new exposure sites added to the list today. These are the most recent ones, which were announced on Sunday:
- Yarra Trams No. 11 between 7.55am and 8.10am on February 11. (Start: D16 - Harbour Esplanade/Collins Street. Finish: William Street/Collins Street stop #3)
- Yarra Trams No. 58 between 8.10am and 8.25am on February 11. (Start: Bourke Street/William Street stop #5. Finish: Queen Victoria Market/Peel Street stop #9)
- Queen Victoria Market, between 8.25am and 10.10am on February 11. (Visited section 2 with fruit and vegetables, and used the section 2 female toilet.)
- Yarra Trams No. 58 between 9.40am and 9.55am on February 11 (Start: Queen Victoria Market/Peel Street stop #9. Finish: Bourke Street/William Street stop #5)
Calls to extend JobKeeper grow after Victoria’s lockdown
By Jennifer Duke
Victoria’s five-day lockdown and state border closures to limit the spread of coronavirus have renewed union and business group calls for the multibillion-dollar wage subsidy scheme JobKeeper to be extended beyond March despite federal government plans to wind back support.
More than 1.5 million workers were on JobKeeper at the end of 2020, new figures compiled by the Tax Office and released by the government show. But about 520,000 employers and 2.13 million staff who were receiving the subsidy when it was first introduced last March were no longer receiving the payments by the end of 2020.
But the present lockdown in Victoria, scheduled to end on Wednesday night, has fuelled debate about the future of both the wage subsidy scheme and the rate of the dole payment JobSeeker, formerly known as Newstart.
Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Sally McManus said on ABC’s Sunday Insiders program that the Morrison government should retain the JobKeeper scheme “for as long as the pandemic is with us”.
“If you are in Melbourne at the moment, you would be pretty worried about JobKeeper being removed,” she said. “What we say is JobKeeper should be extended for those businesses that are still affected by the coronavirus ... We say that because that will save jobs.”
Melbourne church under investigation for flouting lockdown rules
By Marissa Calligeros
A church in Melbourne’s south-east is under police investigation after footage emerged showing about 50 worshippers gathering without masks, singing and praying on Sunday despite the state’s stage-four lockdown.
The service at Revival Christian Church in Narre Warren was filmed by right-wing YouTube activist Avi Yemini, who purports to work as a journalist for Rebel Media.
Outside the church, the leader told police: “I guess the question is do I obey God, or do I obey man? And so I have chosen today to open up the church and to keep my doors open to the people in obedience under God.“
The man, referred to as the pastor, later told Mr Yemini that he believed it was “time to draw a line in the sand”.
In a statement, police said officers were called to a religious service on Victor Crescent about 11am on Sunday and would issue the organiser with an infringement notice for breaching the directions of the Chief Health Officer.
“There were also several people seated at an adjoining café connected with the religious group,” police said.
“People dispersed without incident upon police arrival. The investigation into the incident remains ongoing with inquiries being made in relation to possible incitement offences.“
A Facebook page associated with the church has previously shared discredited conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and claimed lockdown directions are unlawful.
Last year Mr Yemini launched legal action against the state of Victoria, as the responsible body for Victoria Police, over his arrest at two anti-lockdown protests, accusing the force of false imprisonment, battery and hindering his career as a journalist. He also raised $100,000 through crowdfunding for a constitutional challenge against the lockdown.
The seven-day case average in the US drops below 100,000 for the first time in months
Average daily new coronavirus cases in the United States dipped below 100,000 in recent days for the first time in months, but experts cautioned Sunday that infections remain high and precautions to slow the pandemic must remain in place.
The seven-day rolling average of new infections was well above 200,000 for much of December and went to roughly 250,000 in January, according to data kept by Johns Hopkins University. That average dropped below 100,000 on Friday (local time) for the first time since November 4. It stayed below 100,000 on Saturday.
Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press that the data was encouraging but that case numbers are still more than double what the United States was recording during the middle of last year.
“It’s encouraging to see these trends coming down, but they’re coming down from an extraordinarily high place.”
AP
Israeli study finds 94% drop in symptomatic COVID-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine
Israel’s largest healthcare provider on Sunday reported a 94 per cent drop in symptomatic COVID-19 infections among 600,000 people who received two doses of the Pfizer’s vaccine in the country’s biggest study to date.
Health maintenance organization (HMO) Clalit, which covers more than half of all Israelis, said the same group was also 92% less likely to develop severe illness from the virus.
The comparison was against a group of the same size, with matching medical histories, who had not received the vaccine.
A vial of the Pfizer vaccine for COVID-19, a product that is in high demand.Credit:AP
“It shows unequivocally that Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine is extremely effective in the real world a week after the second dose, just as it was found to be in the clinical study,” said Ran Balicer, Clalit’s chief innovation officer.
He added that the data indicates the Pfizer vaccine, which was developed in partnership with Germany’s BioNTech, is even more effective two weeks or more after the second shot.
Reuters
Most Viewed in National
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMingFodHRwczovL3d3dy5zbWguY29tLmF1L25hdGlvbmFsL2Nvcm9uYXZpcnVzLXVwZGF0ZXMtbGl2ZS1uZXctemVhbGFuZC10cmF2ZWwtYnViYmxlLXN1c3BlbmRlZC1jb3ZpZC0xOS1jYXNlcy13b3JsZHdpZGUtc3VycGFzcy0xMDgtbWlsbGlvbi0yMDIxMDIxNS1wNTcyZ2QuaHRtbNIBngFodHRwczovL2FtcC5zbWguY29tLmF1L25hdGlvbmFsL2Nvcm9uYXZpcnVzLXVwZGF0ZXMtbGl2ZS1uZXctemVhbGFuZC10cmF2ZWwtYnViYmxlLXN1c3BlbmRlZC1jb3ZpZC0xOS1jYXNlcy13b3JsZHdpZGUtc3VycGFzcy0xMDgtbWlsbGlvbi0yMDIxMDIxNS1wNTcyZ2QuaHRtbA?oc=5
2021-02-14 21:04:00Z
52781374931738
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Coronavirus updates LIVE: New Zealand travel bubble suspended; COVID-19 cases worldwide surpass 108 million - The Sydney Morning Herald"
Post a Comment