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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.
Here’s a bit more from Chip Le Grand and Melissa Cunningham’s story on the vaccine rollout and the issues with a tech system from Microsoft that was supposed to make this all a bit easier.
The problems with the system come despite tech giant Microsoft announcing in February that the Victorian government would be able to rely on its Vaccination Registration and Administration Solution platform, a system being used by several US states, to inoculate more than 6 million people and “optimise citizen experience”.
Although Microsoft Australia’s chief executive, Steven Worrall, promised in February that its technology needed only to be “fine-tuned” to adapt to the Victorian rollout, the platform was not ready to go when acting Premier James Merlino, armed with an additional supply of Pfizer vaccine from the Commonwealth, invited everyone over 40 to get a jab.
Senior government sources conceded that bedding down the platform had not been given priority owing to the shortage of vaccines and tepid demand before this week’s outbreak in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, which forced the state into its fourth lockdown.
Read the full story here
So here’s some of the latest headlines
Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of the coronavirus crisis in Victoria.
I’m The Age digital editor Mathew Dunckley and I’ll be with you through the first part of today.
We have again made our live coverage of COVID-19 developments free to all readers in recognition of the public health benefits of providing fast and accurate information to the community.
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMipQFodHRwczovL3d3dy50aGVhZ2UuY29tLmF1L25hdGlvbmFsL3ZpY3RvcmlhL3ZpY3RvcmlhLWNvdmlkLWxpdmUtdXBkYXRlcy12YWNjaW5lLXN5c3RlbS11bmRlci1wcmVzc3VyZS1mb2N1cy1vbi1leHBvc3VyZS12ZW51ZXMtdG8tY29udGFpbi1zcHJlYWQtMjAyMTA1MjktcDU3dzkxLmh0bWzSAaUBaHR0cHM6Ly9hbXAudGhlYWdlLmNvbS5hdS9uYXRpb25hbC92aWN0b3JpYS92aWN0b3JpYS1jb3ZpZC1saXZlLXVwZGF0ZXMtdmFjY2luZS1zeXN0ZW0tdW5kZXItcHJlc3N1cmUtZm9jdXMtb24tZXhwb3N1cmUtdmVudWVzLXRvLWNvbnRhaW4tc3ByZWFkLTIwMjEwNTI5LXA1N3c5MS5odG1s?oc=5
2021-05-28 21:19:33Z
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