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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
National
Donna Lu (now) and Tory Shepherd (earlier)

New cases top 11,000 nationwide amid stoush over ‘tourism testing’ – as it happened

The day that was, Tuesday 28 December

That’s all for today. Here’s what we learned:

  • Daily cases in Australia exceeded 10,000 for the second consecutive day, with a total of 11,264 new Covid cases across the country – the highest figure since the beginning of the pandemic.
  • NSW recorded 6,062 cases and one death, as massive demand for PCR testing led to wait times of up to eight hours. The premier Dominic Perrottet and the health minister Brad Hazzard both blamed “tourism testing” for delays.
  • Victoria recorded 2,738 cases and four deaths, with 361 people in hospital.
  • Queensland recorded 1,158 new cases, with health minister Yvette D’Ath announcing the state would scrap its day five testing requirement for interstate arrivals.
  • SA recorded 995 Covid cases, the ACT recorded 252, Tasmania 43, and the NT 16 cases. WA reported no locally acquired cases, with three new cases in quarantine.
  • In another testing error, the Sydney pathology lab SydPath initially told 486 people their Covid test had a negative result, when they had actually tested positive.
  • Australia retained the Ashes after a dismal third test performance from England. Brad Hazzard also announced that January’s “sacred” Ashes test at the Sydney Cricket Ground would go ahead.

Thanks for joining us!

Exhausted New South Wales health workers are being pressured to return from Christmas leave as hospitals and testing facilities are crippled by surging Covid numbers and staff furloughs.

About 2,000 health workers have been furloughed across the state after being listed as close contacts, prompting NSW Health to slash the isolation time for health workers from two weeks to seven days provided they return a negative PCR test.

There’s some relief forecast for those on the south-west of coast of WA, where temperatures have soared in recent days.

Over the weekend, Perth recorded its hottest ever Christmas day of 42.8C, breaking a record that has stood since 1968.

Over Christmas and Boxing Day, 24 new temperature records were broken in WA.

This isn’t great news (see: climate crisis), particularly in a La Niña summer – though it’s important to note that the climate pattern doesn’t tend to impact the south-west of WA much.

The federal opposition says the Morrison government “should have better prepared for the inevitable spike in cases when they relaxed the rules and opened up again”.

Labor frontbencher Matt Thistlethwaite told reporters at a press conference in Sydney today thousands of Australians were “waiting in unreasonably long queues for PCR tests” and it was hard to access rapid antigen tests. He accused the federal government of a lack of planning:

Australians are now facing the prospect of very long delays and waits for test results, of businesses shutting down and of workers missing shifts and valuable income, because of this government’s incompetence.

The Morrison government has lost control of Covid again.

You would think that they would have learned their lesson after the bungling of the vaccine rollout, but it appears that they haven’t, and the Australian people deserve better.

A PSA for Sydneysiders:

Small businesses have been forced to close during the crucial summer holiday period because of the failure of state and federal governments to bring in free Covid rapid antigen tests, the sector’s peak body says.

Alexi Boyd, the chief executive of the Council of Small Businesses of Australia, has welcomed an announcement by NSW premier Dominic Perrottet that the state had ordered 20m rapid antigen tests, expected to be available by the end of January.

But Boyd said many hospitality and tourism businesses had already been forced to slam shut their doors due to a lack of staff, amid a dramatic increase in Covid case numbers.

Read the full story here:

Updated

On a different kind of test, here’s a laugh to bring us into Tuesday evening. (You can read more reactions to England’s Ashes loss here.)

My colleagues Cait Kelly and Caitlin Cassidy have been reporting today on the issues around PCR testing delays.

Queues of up to eight hours in NSW have led to calls to standardise interstate testing requirements and make rapid antigen tests the norm.

The lines are frustrating for people queuing, but the delays are also affecting public health modelling. Here’s Prof Adrian Esterman from the University of SA:

All of our modelling assumes testing and contact tracing are working well, and they’re not.

So our modelling isn’t accurate and we are getting far more cases than we expected.

Read the full story here:

More details on SA’s Covid situation here:

NSW premier Dominic Perrottet has said “tourism tests” are partly to blame for long wait times for PCR tests in the state. Speaking to Chris O’Keefe on 2GB, he said the proportion of tests being taken for interstate travel was “probably nudging 30%”.

The premier continued:

Our pathology teams both within NSW government and the private companies who work with the government are operating at full capacity.

The anecdotal feedback that we’re getting is that there are many people lining up for tests who do not need them. You do not need to get a test if you are not feeling unwell or not advised to do so by NSW Health.

But the high test positivity rate in NSW seems to suggest a different story. More people who get tested in the state are coming back positive than ever before. Yesterday, 6.5% of the Covid tests reported were positive – the highest rate since the pandemic began.

A higher rate, according to public health experts, means that the official case numbers are likely capturing only a proportion of the true case figures.

Australian Covid cases exceed 10,000 for second straight day

Here’s a summary of all of the Covid case figures across Australia today. It’s the second consecutive day that the country has recorded more than 10,000 cases in total.

  • ACT: 252 cases
  • NSW: 6,062 cases and one death
  • NT: 16 cases
  • Queensland: 1,158 cases
  • SA: 995 cases
  • Tasmania: 43 cases
  • Victoria: 2,738 cases and four deaths
  • WA: no locally acquired cases (three in quarantine)

That brings the total to 11,264 cases.

Updated

South Australia records 995 new Covid-19 cases

NSW testing sites remain under strain

Jonathan Hannam takes a photo while waiting in line for a drive-through Covid test.
Jonathan Hannam takes a photo while waiting in line for a drive-through Covid test. Photograph: Jonathan Hannam

Testing sites around NSW remain under strain, with reports of people sleeping overnight in testing lines around Coffs Harbour to beat the rush. Some people were told there was no point hanging around the north coast station even before the testing site even opened, so large were the numbers.

Locals are saying Sydneysiders driving north are checking in to get tests before they enter Queensland, and it might not be long before those from outside local government areas get refused.

In Sydney, three local sites in the Inner West that had been offering afternoon tests were all closed during a recent reccy.

Across town, my brother Jonathan and sister-in-law Torun spent almost four frustrating hours queuing to get tested in Rose Bay. They were told to expect results within 72 hours, leaving their New Year’s Eve plans in limbo, as is likely to be the case for thousands of people across Australia.

One of their sons, Lukas, gave up waiting and skipped off to St Vincent’s after a tip-off on the @Bondi_Lines Instagram page about shorter wait times.

Perhaps because of doubts about St Vincent’s pathology unit (SydPath) following the incorrect reporting of the Covid results of more than 1,000 patients, others have been wary of visiting the testing site. Lukas got his test within about an hour but has been told he may have to wait more than 72 hours for a result – maybe some extra checking being done there.

Because of a glitch Lukas wasn’t formally told by NSW Health that he was a close contact with someone who tested positive. He says that means he is not eligible for compensation of $750 a week.

“It’s just not good enough,” he said.

Updated

If, like me, you felt like 2021 was in fact a million years long, this gallery is a great visual reminder of the year that was:

Updated

Slight qualification to premier Mark McGowan’s tweet (below), WA Health has just put out a release that there are no new local cases, but there are three new cases, all in quarantine and not linked to the current outbreak.

The department is still testing some close and casual contacts from the French backpacker who was in the community while infectious.

Northern Territory confirms 16 new cases

The Northern Territory has recorded 16 new Covid cases. Five of them are household contacts from the Tennant Creek outbreak.

Updated

Zero new cases for Western Australia:

Aboriginal children in Western Australia have been kept in detention after being granted bail because child protection services did not know where to house them, the Aboriginal Legal Service has said. Read the whole story here:

ACT records 252 new cases

252 new Covid cases have been recorded in the Australian Capital Territory. That’s 252 new cases, and 2,980 negative tests, which seems like quite a high positive rate – but there are a lot of variables in there.

Updated

In case you missed it in the excitement of Australia’s Ashes win: England’s performance in the third test was their lowest total in Australia since 1904.

Relive the glory (or the humiliation) here:

Hello! Donna Lu here, keeping the blog warm while Tory grabs a bite to eat.

We’ve been hearing a lot about long testing queues. Here’s a shot from Fran Kelly from earlier this morning:

New South Wales premier Dominic Perrottet has echoed health minister Brad Hazzard by attacking “tourism tests”.

Hazzard has been snarky with the Queensland government, and says their requirements for tourists to get tested before they visit is clogging up the NSW system.

As people keep reporting those long testing queues and wait times for results, Perrottet’s keen for people to switch to rapid antigen tests and is putting pressure on other premiers to do the same.

He’s promising free rapid tests for NSW by the end of January, and the government has put in an order for 20 million.

He also said pregnant women should not be sitting in testing queues (see below – it came up earlier in the Hazzard conference).

People queue to take Covid-19 PCR tests in Sydney on Tuesday.
People queue to take Covid-19 PCR tests in Sydney on Tuesday. Photograph: Brendon Thorne/AAP

Updated

Some more figures from Queensland:

Missing NSW children found safe after major search

Breaking! New South Wales Police have found the missing children, Hanna and Eli. (You can read the original story here).

Updated

A quick look at the United States now. Those without symptoms will now only have to isolate for five days, down from 10.

The Centers for Disease Control said after isolating, people should wear a mask when they are around other people.

It also recommended a five-day quarantine for those exposed to the virus who are unvaccinated or are more than six months out from their second mRNA dose or more than two months after the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and not yet boosted. You can read our US wrap here:

Australia has retained the Ashes! You can read all the details at our live blog:

Sydney lab identifies 486 new positive Covid cases after testing mistake

Another 486 people who were initially told their Covid test had a negative result were actually positive.

That is a total of 886 people to whom St Vincent’s hospital mistakenly gave the all clear.

First, 400 people were told on Christmas Day that their result was negative, only to be told later they were positive.

Yesterday the hospital’s pathology department (SydPath) said another 950 people who were tested in the days before Christmas were “prematurely” sent a text message saying they were negative when their actual results had not yet been confirmed.

Of those 950 people, 486 were eventually found to be positive. SydPath said:

Once again, we are sincerely sorry for this error and acknowledge the significant impact it has had on those involved.

In order to contend with the major increase in volume of tests SydPath had recently moved from an automated system to a manual system to expedite the release of negative test results. Unfortunately during this manual process a simple data processing error was made which led to the wrong test results being released. We have reverted to our automated systems to ensure this type of error cannot happen again.

Updated

Previously the advice was for those under 50:

If you’re after some more details on those changes in Queensland:

Tasmania reports 43 new cases

There are 43 new Covid cases in Tasmania, and the state government is (like others) considering switching to rapid antigen tests for interstate arrivals.

Tasmania was Covid-free when it reopened its interstate borders on 15 December, and 43 is the second highest daily infection tally since then, AAP reports.

Updated

Some good (and useful!) info here from Sydney airport (update: this is just for international travellers):

Updated

Queensland reports 1,158 new cases

Queensland has recorded 1,158 new Covid cases but has no patients in intensive care or on ventilators.

Health minister Yvette D’Ath announced the government would scrap the day five test for people who have travelled from interstate. She said a positive rate from those tests of about 0.6% meant they were no longer necessary.

(Although, of course, anyone with symptoms should still get tested.)

She said anyone waiting now can leave, although there is a slightly confusing situation where border pass applications still require the test. D’Ath said people should “say yes” to that – but they don’t actually have to.

Updated

'Sacred' SCG Ashes test to go head, NSW minister says

January’s “sacred” Ashes Test at the Sydney Cricket Ground will go ahead, New South Wales health minister Brad Hazzard has announced.

NSW Health will work with Victorian health authorities to manage any potential cases so it can proceed, Hazzard said:

The SCG test is sacred, an important date at the start of the third year of our life with Covid-19. I want to assure the cricket-loving public, under our rules any players with exposure to a known case of Covid-19 would be asked to test and isolate only until a negative result was received.

If there are any cases within the teams, their support staff, or families, we will work with the people involved to ensure they are safe, and there is as little disruption to others as possible.

Updated

A teenager accused of continuing to party at an Adelaide nightclub after being told he was Covid-positive has been charged and denied bail. AAP reports:

A teen who partied at an Adelaide nightclub despite knowing he had tested positive for Covid-19 has been arrested. Police nabbed the 19-year-old Kensington Park man on Tuesday and charged him with failing to comply with emergency directions.

It’s alleged the man stayed at a nightclub in the city after being told by SA Health that he had returned a positive Covid-19 test result, and that he failed to quarantine.

Police denied the man bail. He’s expected to appear in Adelaide magistrates court on Wednesday. He faces up to two years behind bars or a $20,000 fine if convicted.

The state is on high alert after recording 842 new cases on Monday, the state’s highest single-day total. It topped the previous record of 774 on Sunday.

Updated

Sydney's big musicals suspended due to Covid outbreaks

The Covid outbreak continues to batter Sydney’s performing arts sector during what should be the busiest time of the year, with two big musicals forced to cancel shows due to infections within the production.

On 22 December, performances of Hamilton at the Lyric Theatre were suspended “in response to positive Covid-19 results from within the Hamilton company”. The Lin-Manuel Miranda musical is due to reopen again on 5 January, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Come From Away suspended its performances at the Capitol Theatre from 26 to 30 December, and at the moment is planning a return to the stage on 1 January.

The Sydney production of Hamilton
The Sydney production of Hamilton has been suspended due to Covid cases in the company. Photograph: Daniel Boud

Updated

More from Brad Hazzard, the New South Wales health minister. He is pretty keen on getting rid of a whole range of PCR tests in favour of rapid antigen tests.

He said he was talking to the federal government about removing the requirement for PCR tests for international arrivals, and pushing for hospitals to allow pregnant women to do rapid testing at home instead of queueing.

He was also asked by a reporter about new mothers being asked to do PCR tests before seeing their newborns. He said he hadn’t heard about it but didn’t want to see anything come between mothers and their babies.

Hazzard has also spoken to St Vincent’s hospital about errors that saw their pathology department mistakenly tell about 1,400 people their Covid tests were negative:

Unfortunately when people are under pressure, human errors are more frequent.

Updated

Brad Hazzard urges Queensland to drop PCR testing requirements

New South Wales health minister Brad Hazzard has doubled down on his attacks over “tourism testing”.

He blames Queensland’s requirement that visitors be tested before they come for contributing to long testing queues and waits for results.

He encouraged Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk in “the strongest possible terms” to change those requirements as the NSW system faces “huge pressures”:

It’s time that the PCR tests for tourism testing were dropped, preferably today. Rapid antigen tests make more sense for people who are about to cross the border.

Updated

Something a bit more chill, now – overseas customers are “lapping up” Australia’s ice-cream and dairy products, trade minister Dan Tehan says.

Australia had record ice-cream exports last financial year. Tehan said (and I think we can all agree):

A cold ice-cream on a hot summer’s day is one of life’s simple pleasures, and one we’re exporting to the rest of the world.

Updated

More footage of those queues – this one in Sydney. Yikes. A big thank you to everyone involved for their patience ...

Updated

Back on those testing queues, waiting times for results and calls for more rapid antigen testing.

Social media is filling up (again) with reports of people waiting hours – and the day’s just started!

I mentioned Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk is set to make a decision about their use soon, and that NSW health minister Brad Hazzard blamed Queensland for requiring travellers to get tested before they go.

AAP reports that she made her announcement “as hundreds of cars were still lined up at one north Brisbane testing site on Monday just ahead of it closing”:

Of the people AAP spoke to, around half were from interstate and were required to take a PCR test. Car batteries were going flat in the line and people, including the elderly, were forced to wait for hours in hot vehicles.

The numbers appear to correlate with people lining up in the ACT to get tested, with the territory’s health minister saying anecdotal evidence from testing teams pointed to half of all swabs being for people getting tested to travel.

Updated

A potentially deadly batch of ecstasy is circulating in New South Wales.

NSW Health said the “high-dose” pills had twice the average amount of MDMA in them. They’re blue, round and have a Superman logo.

Prof Andrew Dawson, the NSW Poisons Information Centre’s acting medical director, said high doses could cause severe agitation and paranoia, raised body temperature, seizures or fits, irregular heart rhythms and death.

Stay safe, people. And call triple zero if you (or someone you know) is unwell.

Updated

Victoria records 2,738 Covid cases and four deaths

Four people have died in Victoria and the state has recorded 2,738 new cases, with 361 people in hospital, 69 in ICU and 33 on ventilators:

Updated

NSW records 6,062 Covid cases and one death

There has been one death in New South Wales and 6,062 new cases, with 557 people in hospital and 60 in ICU:

Updated

There are various moves afoot to get more rapid antigen tests available, in more situations (see below – treasurer Josh Frydenberg was asked this morning if the federal government could play a bigger role).

Queensland is expected to make a decision on replacing PCR tests with rapid tests in some situations, AAP reports. Australian Capital Territory health minister Rachel Stephen-Smith said they could be useful for screening travellers.

NSW is set to make the tests free in the new year.

South Australia overturned its ban on rapid tests last week.

Labor’s health spokesman Mark Butler has called on the federal government to make them more affordable and accessible.

Updated

I always appreciate a fast-forward video but this one made me feel a little anxious ...

Updated

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has told the ABC he is confident about Australia’s economic recovery despite the “new set of challenges” posed by the Omicron variant.

New Treasury analysis of a bunch of economic indicators show Australia is doing better than many countries. Frydenberg said:

[There] is reason to be confident but there is also reason to follow the health advice and to not be complacent. And so using common sense and compassion as opposed to fear and panic is the way to go forward.

Asked if the federal government would act to ease Covid testing queues and waiting times for results, he said it was encouraging states to adopt rapid antigen tests instead of PCR tests before travel.

And the federal government was doing the “bulk of the heavy lifting” in terms of paying for testing.

Updated

The Covid positive test rate in New South Wales has risen to 6.5%, the highest since the pandemic began.

The positivity rate is up from 1.73% a week ago and 0.71% a fortnight ago, a figure some epidemiologists say is likely to mean a proportion of cases are going undetected. Read more here:

Updated

Good morning

Good morning! Tory Shepherd here, suppressing some envy of all those who are lounging around at the beach, or reading, or still sleeping.

It’s set to be another big day of Covid news as the Omicron variant continues to wreak havoc. Australia hit the grim milestone yesterday of 10,000 new cases in a day.

We’ll let you know today’s results as they come in.

Testing stations have been overwhelmed – AAP reports that in New South Wales alone, the number of tests processed each day has plummeted by more than 60,000 while the number of new infections stays high.

Around the nation healthcare systems are coming under pressure – if not from infected patients, then from staff who have potentially been exposed.

About 2,000 NSW healthcare workers have been furloughed, prompting NSW Health to reduce the staff period of isolation from 14 days to seven:

Healthcare workers essential to service delivery, who are close contacts of a Covid-19 case in the household, will now be able to leave isolation and safely return to work after seven days.

They’ll have to have a negative PCR test on day six and an assessment plan in place.

Still in NSW, Sydney’s St Vincent’s hospital yesterday had to admit to a second error. First, its pathology department mistakenly told 400 people their Covid test was negative, when it was positive.

Then a further 995 negative test results were sent out, when the actual result was not yet known. Human error, apparently.

NSW health minister Brad Hazzard blames Queensland. He said their requirement that travellers get tested before they travel (“simply for tourism”) was putting pressure on the system:

The focus should be only on clinical testing. The energy and capacity of pathology is being sucked out of NSW.

I haven’t forgotten the other states and territories! I’ll keep you posted throughout the day.

Updated

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