Summary
- A hotel in Melbourne housing COVID-positive patients is being evacuated today, after a sprinkler system caused damage to four floors. Thirty-one residents at the Holiday Inn on Flinders Lane are being transferred to the Pullman Hotel, while repairs for water damage to four floors of the Holiday Inn are completed.
- Two new locally acquired COVID-19 cases have been confirmed in Victoria, both of them linked with the Holiday Inn Melbourne Airport outbreak. There were also two new cases among returned travellers in hotel quarantine.
- The World Health Organisation has listed AstraZeneca and Oxford University’s COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use.
- A federal expansion of hotel quarantine could be delayed until April as cyclone season disrupts plans for the Howard Springs camp in the Northern Territory.
- The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide has passed 109 million, and there have been more than 2.4 million deaths from the virus, Johns Hopkins University data shows.
This morning’s press conferences
As of yet, a time has not been set for Victoria’s daily coronavirus update. I’ll update this post with the time once it has been announced.
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and state Education Minister Grace Grace will be holding a press conference at 10am AEST (9am local time). The press conference is to make an education-related announcement but, as with pretty much every state government press conference over the past year, chances are there will be some talk of COVID-19.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian held a press conference at 7am this morning, which you can watch below:
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Deputy Chief Medical Officer says Melbourne hot hotel evacuation will be carried out safely
The evacuation of the Holiday Inn ‘hot hotel’ in Melbourne will be carried out with safety and security in mind, Deputy Chief Medical Officer Michael Kidd has said.
The Holiday Inn on Flinders Lane, which is currently home to 31 people in quarantine and healthcare staff, sustained extensive water damage to four floors on Saturday so the residents are being transferred to the nearby Pullman Hotel in Albert Park. A ‘hot hotel’ is a facility being used to house coronavirus patients.
“Authorities are very experienced in moving around people who either are infected with COVID-19 or at risk of having COVID-19 so I am sure this will be carried out very carefully and appropriately,” he told Channel Nine’s Today program.
You can watch the full interview below:
Professor Kidd said the news 142,000 doses of the Pfizer had arrived in Australia yesterday was “incredibly exciting”.
But he said once people receive the vaccine they must still follow public health measures.
“There are still many things we don’t know about the vaccine - whether people who have been vaccinated can still transmit COVID-19 to other people even though they don’t have symptoms and we don’t know how long the immunity from the vaccine is going to last,” he said.
Thirty-five Queensland suburbs on alert after COVID-19 fragments found in sewage
By Toby Crockford
Queensland Health has 35 suburbs in Logan, south of Brisbane, on alert after coronavirus fragments were found in sewage.
The positive test results were detected in the Loganholme sewage catchment and Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young has urged anyone in the area with symptoms to get tested immediately.
The suburbs included in the warning are Berrinba, Bethania, Boronia Heights, Browns Plains, Carbrook, Cornubia, Crestmead, Daisy Hill, Edens Landing, Heritage Park, Hillcrest, Holmview, Kingston, Kuraby, Logan Central, Logan Reserve, Logan Village and Loganholme.
Also on alert are Loganlea, Marsden, Meadowbrook, Park Ridge, Priestdale, Regents Park, Rochedale South, Shailer Park, Slacks Creek, Springwood, Stockleigh, Tanah Merah, Underwood, Waterford, Waterford West, Woodridge, and Yarrabilba.
Graph: How Victoria’s daily testing numbers are tracking
The headline number in Victoria’s health department’s daily COVID-19 updates is always the number of new locally acquired cases, but the daily testing numbers are important too.
The daily testing numbers give a sense of how widespread testing for the virus has been over the past 24 hours, which helps to give assurance that potential cases out in the community aren’t slipping through the net.
Here is a graph showing daily testing numbers in Victoria. As you can see, testing numbers have been pretty robust in the days since the Holiday Inn outbreak was identified, with more than 20,000 each day carried out.
That big peak in testing - of more than 35,000 daily tests - dates back to the start of January, in the days that followed the Black Rock restaurant outbreak.
Victoria records two new local cases
Victoria has recorded two new locally acquired COVID-19 cases, and both of them are linked with the Holiday Inn outbreak.
There were also two new cases confirmed among returned travellers in hotel quarantine, bringing the total number of new cases on Tuesday to four.
There are currently 25 active cases in Victoria, and a total of 23,950 test results were processed yesterday.
Melbourne quarantine hotel residents transferred to another hotel due to water damage
By Kate Lahey
A hotel in Melbourne housing COVID-positive patients is being evacuated today, after a sprinkler system caused damage to four floors.
Thirty-one residents at the Holiday Inn on Flinders Lane are being transferred to the Pullman Hotel, while repairs for water damage are completed.
A COVID-19 Quarantine Victoria (CQV) spokesperson said the Pullman Albert Park Hotel was assessed by ventilation experts and determined as the most suitable hotel within CQV’s current hotel stock to accommodate symptomatic and positive residents.
Fire trucks were called to the Holiday Inn on Saturday. It was a false alarm - there was no fire and sprinklers caused water damage to four floors. Credit:Chris Hopkins
“Strict infection prevention and control (IPC) measures will be followed during the transfer to ensure the health and safety of residents, staff and the community,” a statement from the spokesperson said.
“Holiday Inn Melbourne on Flinders staff will be transferred to the Pullman Albert Park along with the 31 residents, where they will continue to provide support to residents.”
A sprinkler system was activated on the fourth floor on Saturday, although there was no fire, resulting in water damage to four of the eight floors of the hotel, according to CQV.
The Pullman Albert Park Hotel was previously used to quarantine Australian Open participants and was intended to be brought online shortly as additional quarantine capacity.
NSW Premier to receive vaccination briefing today
By Josh Dye
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian says she will be briefed today on the state’s vaccination plan, with hotel quarantine workers first in line to have the choice to receive a vaccine.
“We know the greatest risk at this stage is a leakage from the quarantine system,” she said.
“At this stage given there is zero community transmission, it stands to reason that those who work in the quarantine system who are directly exposed themselves… is really where our focus will be.”
NSW Premier Gladys BerejiklianCredit:James Brickwood
This will include nurses, police officers, security guards and hotel staff.
Meanwhile, Ms Berejiklian said she has “given up hope” of borders remaining open, after Western Australia announced people from NSW can now travel to the state without quarantining on arrival.
“We can’t always control what other premiers do but we can control what we do,” she said.
COVID-19 exposure sites in Melbourne
Here is the current list of COVID-19 exposure sites in Melbourne.
These are places that were visited in recent days by someone who later tested positive for the virus. Health authorities are urging anyone who has been to any of these locations within the exposure periods to get tested.
You can also view this information as a map:
There have not been any new sites added to the list so far today, but if any high-risk locations are announced I will post them in the blog.
There were three locations added to the list yesterday, although all three sites are at Broadmeadows Central Shopping Centre in Braoadmeadows, in Melbourne’s north. The west side of the complex has been added as an exposure site, along with the BonBon Bakery and Sacca’s Fruit World in the centre.
Pfizer Australia medical director on challenges of storing and transporting the company’s vaccine
Pfizer Australia’s medical director Krishan Thiru has said the company’s vaccine will be delivered successfully, despite the sub-zero temperatures in which the vaccine vials have to be stored and transported.
He appeared on Nine’s Today a short time ago and fielded some questions about the vaccine’s arrival in Australia, particularly about whether the vaccine’s requirement to be stored in minus-70 degree temperatures would cause problems.
He replied Pfizer used specially designed thermal shippers to transport its vaccine vials.
“Our company has rich heritage in cold-chain vaccine storage and distribution,” he said. “So far have a 99.9 per cent success rate from delivering the vaccines from the factory door to where they’re used with quality and integrity intact.”
He said it was too early to gauge whether the vaccine was stopping transmission of the virus in the UK, since the current proportion of the population vaccinated (about 15-20 per cent) was not high enough to make that call.
Watch: Press conference with NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian
An early-morning press conference with NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian, Deputy Premier John Barilaro and state Education Minister Sarah Mitchell is about to get under way.
The Premier will be making an education-related announcement, but it is likely the topic of COVID-19 will come up during question time.
Watch it live below:
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2021-02-15 22:26:00Z
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