We have made our live blog of the coronavirus pandemic free for all readers. Please consider supporting our journalism with a subscription.
Key posts
Victoria has recorded five new local cases overnight and two new cases acquired overseas in hotel quarantine.
The state completed a record 56,624 coronavirus tests on Friday and Victorian authorities administered a record 21,626 vaccine doses.
There’s some long days and nights ahead for Victorians and we know that lockdown is certainly a time to catch up on some streaming.
Our culture team put together a list of the best shows of 2021 so far including: the doco Brazen Hussies, Tina Fey’s spoof Girl5eva, off-beat New Zealand comedy Creamerie and drama It’s a Sin.
The best TV shows of 2021 so far.
You can check out their recommendations here.
Also on the list is The Virtues starring Stephen Graham. The five-star review of this drama is one of the best read culture pieces we’ve put up this year.
One that’s been getting a heavy workout in my house is the Friends reunion, which screened on Thursday and is available on Binge. Debbie Enker has written about today here arguing that the producers did well to opt for a reunion rather than a reboot.
We have got some useful tools for you to use to navigate the lockdown. The first one helps you find testing centres including the likely wait time.
We’ve also been contacted by a staff member at the Melbourne Convention Centre who has pointed out that the entrance to the drive-in testing site is via the MCEC loading dock.
And this one (perhaps our most downloaded of the pandemic) that helps you measure your 5km bubble:
Isolation won’t be a problem for Melbourne University arts student Sobur Dhieu during Victoria’s snap lockdown, but finding a quiet place and even the uninterrupted use of her own computer might be.
Ms Dhieu, 20, lives in Brookfield with her mum, dad and eight siblings, six of whom are school students ranging from twins in prep to a brother in year 12.
The Dhieu family (front left to right) Nyibol, 3 and Sobur 20 (back left to right) Adut 5, Athian, 5, Makuei, 7 dad Andrew, 50, Mayen, 17 and Makuei, 7 mostly worked out of one room together during remote learning.Credit:Joe Armao
It’s noisy, crowded and chaotic, but the family was “trying to make the best of it” as they began an unexpected week stuck at home together, including renewing their 2020 lockdown ritual of a Friday night family movie night, she said.
“I just think they are getting on. My siblings are happy to be at home not having to go to class today but I think they do understand it’s going to be hard next week.”
The large family, who moved to Australia to escape civil war in South Sudan almost 20 years ago, had it drummed into them by their parents that education was the way to a better life than the one they fled, Ms Dhieu said.
But last year’s extended lockdown took a toll on some of the Dhieu children. Their education suffered in a home that had neither enough space nor sufficient digital devices for everyone to learn.
In the mornings, when her siblings spread their books out over the dining table, Ms Dhieu helped her younger brother, who was struggling in remote learning, by logging on to his classes on her laptop.
“It was really hard, I would be sitting there from 8.30am until 5.30pm most days with him, just because it took so long to go through the content, and he really needed his teacher and was dependent on that external support to make sure that he could concentrate and stay on top of things,” Ms Dhieu said.
Read the full story here.
Late yesterday a further 20 Tier One exposure sites were listed for Victoria taking the total number of exposure sites past 150. Many of them are connected with a commercial food delivery driver.
The site list features a number of supermarkets and grocery stores around Melbourne including in Reservoir, Epping, Wollert, Mill Park and Dandenong.
You can explore the sites using our interactive below or visit the official site here.
Kuala Lumpur: Malaysia’s Prime Minister has announced a near-total coronavirus lockdown in the country, with social and economic activities to be halted for two weeks to contain a worsening outbreak.
Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said the decision to implement the lockdown starting on June 1 came after new infections breached 8000 on Friday for the first time, sparking fears the disease could spiral out of control.
The government earlier this month imposed a partial lockdown until June 7, stopping short of shutting down businesses to prevent a possible economic catastrophe. But new infections have climbed since the recent Muslim Eid festival, crossing 6000 on May 19 for the first time and soaring to 8290 on Friday.
This raised the country’s total cases to 549,514. The health ministry also reported another 61 deaths on Friday, pushing the tally to 2552 – nearly 40 per cent recorded this month alone. Malaysia’s total cases and deaths have jumped nearly five-fold compared to all of last year.
Muhyiddin said in a statement that all business activities will be shut down June 1-14 in the first phase of the full lockdown, except for essential services.
If daily cases fall, some economic sectors will be allowed to reopen in the second phase, which is expected to last four weeks, he said. After that, the country will return to current controls, with all businesses allowed to operate but not social activities.
While we’re looking at hotel quarantine, have a read of this piece from political and international editor Peter Hartcher.
He makes a forceful case for the need for more federal government action to boost quarantine saying that the latest outbreak was not just predictable, it was inevitable based on the advice from former top health official Jane Halton.
Noting that one facility with a perfect infection breach record so far is the federally operated Howard Springs centre in the Northern Territory.
Hartcher writes:
“There are some efforts to fix hotel quarantine or replace it, but they are not yet under way. And, in the meantime, when Victoria manages to master the outbreak, more outbreaks will follow. Inevitably. They could hit Victoria but they could just as easily hit any other state. Or all the other states.
“Victoria is bearing the brunt of this latest failure but is not its source. It was the South Australian system of hotel quarantine that failed in this case. The virus was carried from SA to Victoria.
“Hotel quarantine has failed 17 times in the last six months where the virus escaped into the community, on Labor’s tally. At this rate, we should expect another one every nine or 10 days on average. And we should expect that some of those will shut down major cities.
“The system worked perfectly, and protocols were observed, according to the SA government. The shutdown of Victoria for a week is all part of the smooth functioning of the SA hotel quarantine, apparently. Good try, team. It’s a debacle and today Victoria is paying for it.”
You can read the full piece here.
The likely virus leak from a South Australian quarantine hotel that caused Victoria’s lockdown was caused by inadequate ventilation, experts insist, fuelling calls for more dedicated quarantine facilities and national standards for hotel quarantine.
The incident in early May is one of 19 serious leaks from Australia’s hotel quarantine system since the initial devastating Rydges and Stamford hotel outbreaks in 2020 that seeded Victoria’s second wave.
The persistent breaches have so far led to eight lockdowns, including the recent Victorian shutdown as well as snap lockdowns in Perth in January and April.
“Medi-hotels (quarantine hotels) are not fit-for-purpose. We know that anyway, this simply confirms it,” said South Australian based epidemiologist Adrian Esterman.
“The reason why Howard Springs has been so successful is because it has these portable huts, with a big space between each hut, so there is virtually no way someone in one hut can expose someone in another hut.”
Read the full article here.
Here’s the front page today’s print edition of The Age. I had to be in the office for a while yesterday and the entire print production crew were not.
They put this together while scattered around Melbourne which is no mean feat given putting out a newspaper is a difficult enough task at the best of times.
The Age front page 29 May 2021Credit:
Just a bit more detail for you on the news that Victoria enjoyed a record day for vaccine doses administered in a single day on Thursday.
Health department data shows there were 41,389 doses administered on Thursday, breaking the previous record by more than 10,000. After a recent change in the release of those numbers we can now bring you this daily data much faster.
NSW and Queensland also notched up record single-day dose numbers yesterday.
You can explore all the figures in our vaccine tracker here.
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMipQFodHRwczovL3d3dy50aGVhZ2UuY29tLmF1L25hdGlvbmFsL3ZpY3RvcmlhL3ZpY3RvcmlhLWNvdmlkLWxpdmUtdXBkYXRlcy12YWNjaW5lLXN5c3RlbS11bmRlci1wcmVzc3VyZS1mb2N1cy1vbi1leHBvc3VyZS12ZW51ZXMtdG8tY29udGFpbi1zcHJlYWQtMjAyMTA1MjktcDU3dzkxLmh0bWzSAaUBaHR0cHM6Ly9hbXAudGhlYWdlLmNvbS5hdS9uYXRpb25hbC92aWN0b3JpYS92aWN0b3JpYS1jb3ZpZC1saXZlLXVwZGF0ZXMtdmFjY2luZS1zeXN0ZW0tdW5kZXItcHJlc3N1cmUtZm9jdXMtb24tZXhwb3N1cmUtdmVudWVzLXRvLWNvbnRhaW4tc3ByZWFkLTIwMjEwNTI5LXA1N3c5MS5odG1s?oc=5
2021-05-28 22:57:15Z
52781617677696
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Victoria COVID LIVE updates: Five new local cases, record vaccination and testing numbers, exposure sites top 150 - The Age"
Post a Comment