Summary
- Victoria will return to harsher COVID-19 restrictions and up to 600 Australian Open players, officials and support staff have been told to isolate and get tested after a hotel quarantine worker tested positive to coronavirus on Wednesday. All tennis matches at Melbourne Park today have been called off.
- Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said in a late-night press conference on Wednesday that the state would return to mandatory masks indoors, would reintroduce caps on gatherings to 15 people in a household and would pause the 75 per cent return to work, scheduled to begin on Monday.
- Western Australia continues to face twin emergencies - a coronavirus lockdown and devastating bushfires - as Perth residents enter their fourth day of a hard five-day lockdown.
- NSW reached its 17th day without a case of community transmission on Wednesday, while Queensland clocked up 23 days without a locally acquired case.
- The federal government is working with the biotech industry on ways to establish large-scale mRNA vaccine manufacturing in Australia as a group of senior scientists work on a parallel plan to enable local production of the cutting-edge jabs.
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Upcoming: Victorian COVID-19 update
We know you like to keep on top of these things, so here is a heads up about today’s COVID-19 press conference.
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, Health Minister Martin Foley and Police Minister Lisa Neville are due to hold a press conference at 9.30am AEDT.
I suspect we’re going to be back to “daily Dan” while this quarantine breach plays out.
Questions mount over timing of Victoria’s COVID case announcement
By Paul Sakkal
Victoria’s Liberal opposition health spokeswoman Georgie Crozier says she is relieved the Andrews government did not announce a snap lockdown last night but has criticised the government for announcing the new COVID-19 case at 10.30pm.
Ms Crozier said she had heard from her own sources that businesses listed as exposure sites were told late on Wednesday afternoon that workers needed to be sent home.
Opposition health spokeswoman and senior Liberal MP Georgie Crozier.Credit:Justin McManus
She questioned why the government did not announce the new details around the same time.
“Why was the government going out at 10.30 at night?” she said.
Ms Crozier said it was deeply concerning the virus has escaped a quarantine hotel. She called on the government to explain how the virus was transmitted, which the government is working to investigate.
“Maybe the government needs to look at those testing and isolation components of the system,” she said.
Victorian quarantine worker ‘an unusual case’, expert says
By Ashleigh McMillan
A Melbourne epidemiologist says Victoria’s new coronavirus case in a hotel quarantine worker could have had an unusually long virus incubation period, although the virus is “more tenacious” than we understood.
A 26-year-old residential support worker at Melbourne’s Grand Hyatt hotel, who was employed as part of the Australian Open hotel quarantine program, tested negative on January 29 after his last shift but returned a positive result on Wednesday afternoon (February 2).
A quarantine worker and tennis players at the Grand Hyatt hotel in Melbourne on January 21.Credit:Joe Armao
Burnet Institute epidemiologist Michael Toole said the new case would make it appear like Victorians “keep having to start from scratch”.
“We got to 28 days [of no local cases], which is normally two incubation periods, and it means that there’s no virus in the community,” he told ABC radio this morning.
“The precautions that were taken seemed to be the best at the time, but I think we’re just finding out now the virus is a lot more tenacious than we even realised before. I can only assume the support officer did contract infection from someone who arrived here for the Australian Open, so it is causing a disruption.
“As far as I understand, that quarantine support officer tested negative on 29th January, and the last member of the Australian Open entourage tested positive was the 22nd January.
“To me, that’s seven days where there shouldn’t be any virus in the hotel at all, it was just for the Australian Open players and their entourages.
“So we need to find out a bit more, seven days quite a long time to have not been infected. But maybe he was an unusual case, in that he had a longer incubation period that usual.”
Professor Toole also noted that there was a “lesson here for the Olympics”, with more than 11,000 athletes and 5000 officials meant to arrive in Tokyo in late July.
“I hope Tokyo is looking at Australia at the moment to see just how difficult it is to conduct an international sporting event at this time,” he said.
University of Newcastle disputes COVID-19 claims of immunologist
By Natassia Chrysanthos
Turning our attention away from Victoria for the moment, the University of Newcastle has distanced itself from its emeritus professor Robert Clancy, an immunologist, who has been cited by south-west Sydney MP Craig Kelly in his controversial claims about coronavirus treatment.
Professor Clancy says studies have shown that hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin are effective and safe treatments for COVID-19, although they should not be used instead of a vaccine.
Mr Kelly, who received a ‘dressing down’ from Prime Minister Scott Morrison yesterday, has repeated those claims and cited Professor Clancy as an expert on the matter.
However, Australian health authorities do not recommend hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin as treatments for COVID-19.
Vice-chancellor of the University of Newcastle, Professor Alex Zelinsky, disputed Professor Clancy’s authority on the subject yesterday.
“The university does not consider Robert Clancy a subject matter expert on COVID-19,” Professor Zelinsky said in a statement published on Wednesday.
“While the university always respects freedom of speech, Robert Clancy is not speaking on behalf of the University of Newcastle when offering his opinion on this issue.”
Professor Clancy earlier this week told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age he had not met Mr Kelly and did not agree with everything he said but thought he was “absolutely right” on hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin.
“Early treatment is highly effective. Vaccines are critically important. They should not be seen as mutually exclusive. You need them both,” he said.
But Professor Zelinsky said the university had not funded Professor Clancy’s research since 2009, and noted he retired in 2013.
“We support peer-reviewed science-based decision making as we enter this next phase of the pandemic management, in which vaccination plays an important role. Rigorous peer-reviewed research evidence must remain a key mechanism to guide major policy and public health responses,” he said.
“We encourage and promote innovation in research that is underpinned by rigorous scientific principles. Our researchers are expected to adhere to strict scientific standards in providing opinions on matters of public interest.”
Qld border announcement expected soon
By Lydia Lynch
A decision about whether to shut Queensland’s border to Victoria is expected to be announced this morning.
Queensland’s Acting Premier Steven Miles will address the media from the central Queensland city of Rockhampton at about 9am local time (10am AEDT).
Acting Queensland Premier Steven Miles.Credit:Jono Searle/Getty Images
Senior government sources say the fresh case is unlikely to see Queensland’s border to Victoria close “at this stage”, but that may change if there is a rapid escalation of cases in the next few days.
The state closed its borders to Western Australia after a case seeped out of a quarantine hotel on Sunday, triggering Perth’s five-day lockdown.
Victoria has tightened gathering restrictions but has so far avoided another lockdown.
Queensland defines a hotspot as a place “where health officials have found a lot of people with COVID-19, or places that are at risk of a lot of COVID-19 infections”.
‘The next few days will be crucial’: Tony Bartone says Aus Open hangs in the balance
Former Australian Medical Association president and Melbourne GP, Tony Bartone, says the next few days are crucial for Victoria.
“Here we go again, you might say. It was looking good there again – 28 days, no community transmission – but it does point again that while we continue to repatriate Australians and other international people back to Australia for whatever reason with quarantine, we’ve always got that possibility of the virus getting out back into the community,” Dr Bartone told Nine’s Today show earlier this morning.
“There is no clear understanding about where or how ... the worker has contracted the virus on this occasion other than being in that quarantine hotel.
“They’ll be reviewing CCTV footage. They’ll be doing testing of all the other people who are considered close contacts and the close contacts of those. So that ring-fencing around the incident will be giving us the surety and the confidence that we’re going to try and get on top of it as quickly as possible and protect the community.”
The Australian Open now hangs in the balance, with Dr Bartone saying the outcome of rapid testing will help determine whether officials allow spectators at Melbourne Park for the grand slam.
“The next few days will be crucial. Obviously, the 600 people who have been put into isolation and told to get tested today is going to be stage one. If any of them test positive, I think that does really put a big question mark about the next few days. If we see cases come in from that, it does raise a question about crowds definitely for the next week’s Open.”
Victoria records three new COVID cases in hotel quarantine worker, two guests
As is apparent now, Victoria’s run of 28 days without a case of community transmission has sadly come to an end with the infection in an Australian Open hotel quarantine worker that was confirmed last night.
Two other cases have also been detected in hotel quarantine
More than 13,000 tests were carried out yesterday, but you can expect to see that figure skyrocket as people turn out in droves to get tested today.
Long queues for COVID testing in Melbourne’s south-east
Long queues have already formed at a drive-through coronavirus testing site at Springers Leisure Centre in Keysborough, in Melbourne’s south-east.
“I would say there’s almost 100 cars now,” Today show reporter Izabella Staskowski has told Melbourne radio station 3AW. “It was supposed to open at 8am, but they had to open early – 15 minutes early – because of the sheer number of people that are here.”
Front pages of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald
The Reserve Bank of Australia governor’s call for a permanent rise in the dole is making headlines in today’s papers. Philip Lowe declared it an issue of fairness while revealing the economy could need record low interest rates until the middle of the decade.
Carrie Fellner continues her coverage of hospital deaths in NSW regional hospitals. Senior doctors have accused public health officials of covering up avoidable deaths, including the death of a young man from an infected toenail after he turned up to emergency four times, she writes.
‘We’ve done this before, we’ll do it again’: latest word from Andrews
If you were asleep when Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews held a press conference at 10.30pm on Wednesday, here is his latest update via Facebook:
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2021-02-03 21:59:00Z
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