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Watch LIVE: Victoria’s road map out of lockdown revealed
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, Health Minister Martin Foley and Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton are unveiling a road map for the state to reopen after lockdown, including a plan for schools to return to face-to-face learning.
Watch the video below from 12.15pm:
Burnet modelling shows Victorian case peaks will be in October and December
By Ashleigh McMillan
Victoria is expected to hit a peak of up to 2900 daily cases by the end of October, according to the modelling on which Victoria’s road map out of lockdowns is based.
Premier Daniel Andrews said the lockdowns in Victoria had been “buying us time” to get to 70 per cent and 80 per cent fully vaccinated population targets. He said it was clear doctors and nurses would come under “intense pressure” in the coming weeks and months as case numbers rose.
Mr Andrews said Burnet Institute modelling showed cases would hit a second peak at 4500 cases in mid-December, after restrictions were loosened.
According to the documents, hospital admissions will peak at 3150 by the end of December, and deaths from the Delta variant will peak at around 2200 in January.
“There is going to be some very difficult days and weeks, perhaps longer in our health system,” Mr Andrews said.
“I have nothing but respect and absolute admiration for those who work in our health system. We will stand with you, we will support you, and we will monitor very closely what the impact of this inevitable opening up, which is absolutely essential.”
What will happen when Victoria reaches 70 per cent double dose vaccination coverage?
By Sumeyya Ilanbey
Vaccines will be mandatory for all authorised workers, teachers, childcare workers, parents of childcare workers, hospitality workers and hospitality patrons as the state moves to reopen schools and businesses.
Hospitality venues and places of worship will be permitted to operate outdoors under density limits and outdoor gatherings will be allowed for up to 50 people once 70 per cent of Victorians aged over 16 have been fully vaccinated under the new road map out of COVID-19 restrictions. Mandatory masks will remain.
The re-opening of schools will not be tied to vaccination coverage, with Year 12 students allowed to return to face-to-face learning five days per week from October 5. Prep students will be back to the classroom for three days per week and Years 1 and 2 student two days per week from October 18.
Childcare will open to all children from October 26 if both parents are fully vaccinated, while the remaining year levels will return to school between two and five days per week from that date until November 5 when schools will stay open for all students all week.
Construction will be allowed to resume at full capacity and community sport allowed back on when the state hits 70 per cent second dose coverage, expected October 31.
Victorians urged to make AstraZeneca appointments
By Ashleigh McMillan
A man in his 90s from Moreland in Melbourne’s north is the latest Victorian to have died from COVID-19.
Eighty-four per cent of the 507 cases announced on Sunday are aged under 50, Premier Daniel Andrews said. There are now 204 Victorians in hospital with the virus, with 55 people in intensive care, and 38 people on ventilators.
With more than 43,000 vaccinations completed on Saturday, Mr Andrews urged Victorians to get an AstraZeneca appointment as the Pfizer supply is now “a bit uncertain”, he said.
“At Friday’s national cabinet [we were] told that there are some issues with just exactly how much Pfizer is coming in October, there’s an issue with the order,” he said.
“That’s another reason to go and book your AstraZeneca appointment today, they’re available and there for you.”
Victorian press conference at 12.15pm
Victoria’s press conference will be held at 12.15pm - we’ll bring you the live feed shortly.
Meanwhile, the ACT has recorded 17 new cases of COVID-19 on Sunday.
‘I absolutely stand by the approach taken’, Premier says as LGA rules ease
Residents across the 12 local government areas of concern in Sydney may be feeling relieved knowing they are now subject to the same outdoor exercise and recreation rules as people in Sydney’s northern and eastern suburbs.
They will be able to picnic in groups of five fully-vaccinated people from tomorrow, and access to public pools will come one week later.
But the harsher restrictions that people in south-west and western Sydney have been subject to until now - bigger police presence, curfew, limits on exercise hours and outdoor gatherings - have built resentment and created divisions across the city for several weeks.
Now that rules are easing again, Premier Gladys Berejiklian was asked whether she stood by those restrictions.
Premier Gladys Berejiklian explained why she stood by her decision to impose tougher restrictions on half the city.Credit:Edwina Pickles
Here is what she said:
I absolutely stand by the approach taken, as difficult as it was... We always said that we didn’t want to burden our citizens unless we absolutely had to, so it was the least worst option.
The other option was to have those measures across the whole city or state, when in hindsight we may not have needed to. I can appreciate how people feel like that, but we have just followed the statistics, done what we have needed to do.
When I look back now, it’s too early to make assessments on what happened and what didn’t happen, but I think it’s really interesting to see how long NSW remained around the 200 case number; those weeks that we were able to keep the case numbers so low prevented us from having doubling or tripling of case numbers as we have seen in other places.
Now in those areas of concern, we are less worried because we have got high rates of vaccination among the most vulnerable, and when I say most vulnerable, I mean in communities where there is high circulation of disease. We are so pleased that the targeted vaccination strategy is having a positive impact.
Some of my hardest days in the job are days when you take away people’s freedoms, subject them to horrific situations. But you have to do that based on the advice on what is best for the community. And it is too early to say to what extent we have been successful or otherwise, but I do know that we have prevented thousands of hospitalisations and potentially thousands of deaths and that is what our intention was, until we got high rates of vaccination.
‘No one had to be there’: Victoria’s Police Association speaks after protest
By Ashleigh McMillan
The head of Victoria’s Police Association says officers have expressed “concerns” around tactics used in Melbourne’s anti-lockdown protests after 10 police members were injured on Saturday.
Wayne Gatt said he believed his members showed “as much restraint as they could” when faced with anti-lockdown protesters throwing projectiles and directly attacking police. Around 235 people were arrested after around 700 people turned up to anti-lockdown demonstrations in the city’s inner east.
Police in Melbourne during an anti-lockdown protest on Saturday.Credit:Luis Enrique Ascui
“They came into that demonstration with the intent to hurt our members, and they succeeded against 10 of them,” he told reporters on Sunday.
“I’m not coping looking at the 0.01 per cent of actions and looking at our members who were confronted with such overwhelming violence... Those actions wouldn’t have occurred if those people didn’t attend an unlawful protest, no one had to be there.”
Mr Gatt said that “we need to stop nancy-pansying around these people, and we need to stop this needless debate about the proportionality, issues of what’s right and what’s wrong”. “Members went in there they did everything they could, they showed us much restraint as they could.”
He said officers stationed in the Melbourne CBD heard the “screams and calls for help” from police who were dealing with protesters in Richmond and Hawthorn.
Six police officers were hospitalised with a range of injuries, including torn muscles, a broken elbow, broken nose, broken finger, and bruises. Mr Gatt said his members had expressed some “concerns” around tactics used by the police command after officers were injured, and conversations would be held with Victoria Police in coming days.
“That’s something that we struggle with and it’s something that will challenge us in the days and hours ahead,” he said. “We’ll talk to Victoria Police about how we can do things better, to make sure that that isn’t an outcome of future protester demonstration activity.”
Have NSW case numbers peaked?
Today’s case numbers in NSW are the lowest recorded in the state since last month, prompting the question: are we on the way down?
This is what Dr Jeremy McAnulty said:
It is very encouraging, the numbers today are fewer than the case numbers we had yesterday. We don’t want to jump the gun - we do like to see several days before we can call it a trend - but certainly cases overall have stabilised and appear to be dropping in some areas where we have had rapidly increasing vaccination uptake as well as good compliance.
But in other areas of the state, particularly Illawarra and the Central Coast we have seen inconsistency across the board. Those numbers are very encouraging, and we would like to see further reduced numbers in cases.
Premier Gladys Berejiklian said she was “not displeased with where we are”.
“But we know it is precarious. We know that you can certainly have those case numbers go back up, if a bit too many people do the wrong thing. And that is why our plan to reopen is a very cautious one and that is why we are saying to everyone, please do not be complacent,” she said.
“We don’t know yet whether we have passed those peaks but the signs are encouraging... In some of those areas of concern, we have seen, in the last week, the trend declining.”
She said the state tended to record its highest case numbers for the week on Saturdays. “Last Saturday we had around 1599, I think it was in yesterday we had [1331], so from Saturday to Saturday there has been a decline,” she said.
No new cases in Redfern social housing; 64 cases in the Illawarra
Dr McAnulty said there had been no new cases across the inner city social housing buildings on Morehead Street in Redfern in the latest reporting period.
“There remain 20 cases across the three buildings which are home to more than 630 residents,” he said. “We really want to thank the community in that part of Redfern for coming forward for testing and vaccination. We have had a fantastic response in recent days and that is continuing.”
He also provided the following breakdown of regional cases:
- 64 cases in the Illawarra
- 20 on the Central Coast
- 13 in the Hunter
- 18 in western NSW
- 10 in the far west
- Three in Yass
- Three in Bateman’s Bay
- One in Goulburn
- Three on the Mid North Coast
- One in Lismore
NSW records 1083 cases, 13 deaths
There were 1083 locally acquired COVID-19 cases reported in NSW in the most recent 24-hour period, and 13 deaths.
NSW Health’s Dr Jeremy McAnulty said there were 1238 people with COVID-19 admitted to hospital, with 234 in intensive care, including 123 requiring ventilation.
Of the 13 people who died, nine were not vaccinated. Two people, in their 70s and 80s with underlying health conditions, had received two doses. A further two people in northern Sydney who died had received one dose.
One man in his 40s from western Sydney died at home, and was diagnosed following his death. There was also a death in Dubbo: a woman in her 70s who died at an aged care facility.
“We extend our deepest sympathy to the family and friends of the people who have died. There have now been 231 COVID-related deaths in NSW since the 16th of June, 297 in total.”
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2021-09-19 02:49:21Z
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