We’ll leave it there for now. Thanks for reading. Stay safe, and see you tomorrow. (And if you’re in Melbourne, wear a mask!)
Summary
Let’s take a look at today’s main developments.
- Victoria recorded nine new deaths and 295 new infections. The second figure is a reduction on previous days.
- NSW recorded 19 new cases, with a cluster in the inner suburb of Potts Point growing.
- Queensland closed its borders to greater Sydney, as the state recorded three new cases and closed all aged care homes to visitors for 48 hours.
- The consumer price index fell 1.9% in the June quarter, the largest fall in its 70-year history.
Updated
NRL boss Peter V’landys insists NSW’s Covid-19 contact tracing means NRL players can stay in the state long term after receiving confirmation they can continue flying into Queensland.
Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk on Wednesday announced the state would close its borders to all residents of greater Sydney on Saturday from 1:00am.
However, the NRL received confirmation on Wednesday evening it would remain exempt from the changes.
It means the 10 Sydney-based teams will continue to be chartered to Queensland to play without staying overnight, reports AAP.
Queensland teams will also be able to make the same trip in reverse, with players on both sides of the Tweed still in their bubbles.
Updated
In case you’ve been following this.
We have zero cases in Canberra. I followed every rule, as did every citizen that lives with me in the ACT. Maybe do some research you pelican.
— Nicholas Kyrgios (@NickKyrgios) July 29, 2020
Don't know what Health Dept did setting standards for the guards, training them. Inquiry will tell us. Crisis management worked with the Stamford. Systemic response failed. Cheap casuals shld never have been as poorly trained and as poorly supervised. #springst #COVIDVIC19
— Rafael Epstein (@Raf_Epstein) July 29, 2020
2/2
You may remember the viral social media video last week in which a woman called Eve refused to answer police questions at a Covid checkpoint.
Well, she has now been arrested.
At the time, Eve said she wanted to stand up for the rights of her “brothers and sisters here on earth”, and the officers at the time allowed her to pass through the checkpoint.
She went on to boast about the encounter on social media and police later said they wished to speak to her.
Today, Black was spotted driving through Carlton. Police say she once again refused to give her name or licence, or wind down her window or step out of the car. The officers broke her car window in the process of arresting her.
Channel Seven reports she has been released but is expected to be charged with traffic offences and breaching a Covid checkpoint.
The COVID-denier involved in a checkpoint stunt has been arrested. https://t.co/77dStEsB8m @tdolling #7NEWS pic.twitter.com/VhCvfzU5GX
— 7NEWS Melbourne (@7NewsMelbourne) July 29, 2020
Updated
We welcome the Prime Minister asking the Attorney to discuss with us paid pandemic leave for all workers. This initiative is a key part of our defence against the spread of Covid19. It will save lives and jobs
— Sally McManus (@sallymcmanus) July 29, 2020
The prime minister, Scott Morrison, revealed today that he has asked the attorney general to discuss paid pandemic leave with unions and business.
This has been a key demand of unions for months.
Paul Karp has filed this report on the PM’s comments today – and what they could mean.
Updated
The Australian share market has closed lower as investors wait for a crucial meeting of the US Federal Reserve.
After climbing as much as 0.5% in early trading on the back of gains in banking stocks, the benchmark S&P/ASX200 index finished Wednesday down 14.1 points, or 0.23% lower, at 6,006.4 points.
The All Ordinaries index was dropped by 18.8 points, or 0.31%, at 6,128.
Traders were waiting for an announcement from the US central bank on interest rates, due to take place in the early hours of Thursday, Australian time, AAP reported.
Updated
Victoria update: Stats and outbreaks
Here are some data points and other facts that caught my eye in today’s update from the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services.
Active cases related to aged care increased to 804, up from 769 from yesterday. As my colleague Melissa Davey noted, health workers cases have also increased by 81 infections, to 502.
Of the top five aged care outbreaks:
- 91 cases have been linked to Estia Aged Care Facility in Ardeer (+3 from yesterday).
- 89 cases have been linked to St Basil’s Home for the Aged in Fawkner (+3).
- 86 cases have been linked to Epping Gardens Aged Care in Epping (+4).
- 79 cases have been linked to Kirkbrae Presbyterian Homes in Kilsyth (+3).
- 62 cases have been linked to Menarock Life Aged Care Facility in Essendon (no change).
And other key outbreaks:
- 100 cases have been linked to Somerville Retail Services in Tottenham (+1).
- 100 cases have been linked to Bertocchi Smallgoods in Thomastown (+11).
- 78 cases have been linked to JBS in Brooklyn (+2).
- 51 cases have been linked to Australian Lamb Company in Colac (+1).
- 29 cases have been linked to Woolworths Distribution Centre Mulgrave (no change).
Updated
29 door knocks have gone unanswered.
— Sharnelle Vella (@SharnelleVella) July 29, 2020
That means there are 29 people who’ve tested positive and can not be found. Victoria police notified. @7newsmelbourne
I thought it was worth recapping the commentary from Victorian and federal politicians about the situation in aged care. It is hard to overstate the difference in their positions on the question of whether residents are safe in aged care homes.
The commonwealth, through ministers Greg Hunt and Richard Colbeck, say families should have confidence their families will be safe in residents aged care.
The Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, had a very different position on Tuesday. Asked if he would want his mother to live in an aged care facility in Victoria, he said.
Some of the stories we’ve seen are unacceptable and I wouldn’t want my mum in some of those places.
I would not let my mum be in some of these places. I just wouldn’t. But that’s not a decision I have to make at the moment because she’s living at home and she’s very happy to be at home.
Asked the same question yesterday, federal health minister, Greg Hunt, said: “My father lived in one, yes.”
“It’s a difficult decision for any family and it’s a difficult time.”
And the idea that our carers, that our nurses are not providing that care, I think, is a dangerous statement to make. They are wonderful human beings and I won’t hear a word against them.
Aged care minister Richard Colbeck today added that families “can have confidence in the sector more broadly across Victoria”.
I wouldn’t agree with you that it is not safe to have a family member in an aged care facility in Victoria.
Updated
Some nice moody shots from today’s Victorian press conference, featuring chief health officer, Brett Sutton, and the premier, Daniel Andrews.
These were taken by AAP’s Daniel Pockett.
Tighter restrictions will be in place for gyms in NSW from Saturday, including the requirement of a permanent on-site hygiene marshal to ensure social distancing, equipment cleaning and hand sanitiser availability.
This includes 24/7 gyms that are otherwise unstaffed at certain periods, AAP reports.
A Fitness First gym in Kings Cross on Tuesday confirmed one person who attended the gym for a class on 20 July had tested positive.
Two infected Thai Rock Potts Point diners also visited the nearby Cruising Yacht Club Australia in Rushcutters Bay on 23 July, 24 July and 26 July.
The prestigious members-only club, which is the home of the annual Sydney-to-Hobart race, has closed until 1 August for deep cleaning.
Updated
This is the list of places where the two Covid-19 cases on Brisbane’s south side had visited.
Here's a list of the places the women have been while infectious. Anyone who's been there at the relevant times should self isolate @10NewsFirstQLD pic.twitter.com/KTB6zhDB36
— Clare Barnes (@ClareBarnes_10) July 29, 2020
Updated
Queensland reports third case today
A third case has been identified in Queensland, a few hours after two cases were recorded.
The first two cases related to two women, both 19, who travelled from Melbourne and returned to Brisbane’s southside. Authorities are furious and allege the women provided false information on a border declaration.
Queensland Health said in a statement on Wednesday that a third case had now been reported.
That person is a 22-year-old woman who is a close contact who works at YMCA Chatswood Hills Outside School Hours Care. The school is now closed temporarily.
Queensland’s chief health officer, Dr Jeannette Young, said people who live in the areas of Logan, South Brisbane or Springfield should stay home if they are feeling unwell and get tested.
People will need to self-isolate if they have visited locations listed here by Queensland Health.
Updated
Important question. Is there a national plan to deal with similar outbreaks in other states?
Here is Colbeck’s answer:
We have a process now which is pretty well practised, where as soon as we get advice of an outbreak we send in first responders, they do an assessment of the facility, we make PPE available to the facility, we look at the workforce to see whether there is any contact and whether they require assistance, so that process has been pretty well practised, both in a number of states, here in Tasmania, where we have had three circumstances in New South Wales, Victoria as well, and our response teams that manage those things who report back to us on a daily basis about each of the cases are now pretty practised at that, so that system is working quite well.
Updated
Quite significant pushback here from Richard Colbeck on the issue of whether the aged care outbreaks in Victoria are related to the fact the homes in question are privately owned:
I think this is a bit of a line that is being run and I think it is a furphy. I do not agree with that and I think it is an unfortunate way to try and characterise the aged care sector.
Look, we all know there are issues with aged care and that is why we called the royal commission.
Colbeck says Daniel Andrews’ comments on the issue were “really unfortunate”. He says his aunt is in aged care in Devonport.
In response to a question from a journalist, Andrews said yesterday he would not want his mum to be living in some privately run aged care homes in Victoria.
Updated
Colbeck says the government as a whole has to “take responsibility” for what the secretary of the Department of Health, Brendan Murphy, called serious deficiencies of care in aged care homes in Victoria:
Some of the things that happened at St Basil’s with the very rapid change that was required were acceptable. So we’ll have to take responsibility for that. And of course, there were significant efforts on behalf of all of those involved to try and rectify the situation. But contemplating the circumstances we were faced where the entire workforce, including management, were isolating in a very short period of time coming up with the new workforce and a new management structure was a very difficult set of circumstances. And we didn’t get it all right.
Updated
Richard Colbeck stresses though that families “can have confidence in the sector more broadly across Victoria”:
I wouldn’t agree with you that it is not safe to have a family member in an aged care facility in Victoria. I don’t agree with that as a statement. There are 766 care facilities in Victoria and 71 of them have a case of Covid.
Updated
Colbeck says the government is “looking at” providing any emergency home care packages or assistance for families who now want to take their loved one out of aged care.
I don’t have the capacity to interfere with the National priority system that exists for home care packages but there are mechanisms we do have and we are having some conversations with some families about taking their family members home.
Colbeck is asked repeatedly whether the Victorian government took steps quickly enough to suspend elective surgery (which allows aged care residents to be moved to hospital).
He dodges the question, saying he doesn’t want to “get into an argument with the Victorian government”.
But he says the decision is already having results.
Updated
The aged care minister, Richard Colbeck, is on ABC radio talking to Patricia Karvelas.
He rejects suggestions that the problems in aged care are specific to the private sector – which is a point the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, has made. Colbeck says:
It is aged care across the board – there is no difference between any form of facility as to the infection rate in Victoria at the moment, particularly in metro Melbourne.
It is aged care that is suffering and aged care as a victim of the community transmission.
Updated
Bill Shorten says pandemic leave, which has been offered to aged care workers through the Fair Work Commission, should be extended to all workers:
Why should a low-paid worker who does valuable work have to choose between being ill or being paid?
He also says he thinks there is a “proportion of the population who shrug their shoulders” at the deaths of older people owing to Covid.
Shorten says these people think: “Oh well, they are old and going to die anyway, what is the problem?”
I don’t share that view and I think most Australians realise that older people are people’s mothers and fathers and grandparents. You judge your society by how you treat your most vulnerable, not how you treat the most well off.
Updated
The Labor MP Bill Shorten is on the ABC as we speak. He’s talking about Theo Makridis, a resident at St Basil’s aged care home in Melbourne who has died. Theo used to live next door to Shorten.
It’s an awful story.
Shorten says that for five days, Theo’s daughter, Rita, couldn’t get a straight answer about what had happened:
I hit the phones all day Saturday and then unfortunately Rita got that call which a whole lot of us dread, which is that he had passed away. And for five days, not knowing, not being able to comfort and have our last conversation, I mean, it got so absurdly tragic that on the Sunday, a commonwealth representative rang Theo’s daughter Rita and said he was OK. But he had died the day before. So it is just a horrible nightmare of poor communication in aged care.
Updated
In Victoria, five people between 20 and 39 years old are in intensive care.
The latest data on hospital admissions in Victoria shows Covid is hitting younger people.
— Richard Willingham (@rwillingham) July 29, 2020
Three people in their 20s are in Intensive care. @abcnews @abcmelbourne pic.twitter.com/87NJqbMaVm
Premier Andrews famously said two months ago “who would want to go to South Australia “ now 50 nurses from South Australia are coming to Victoria to help us out
— Tony Tardio (@tonytardio) July 29, 2020
The new Queensland border restrictions have forced Super Netball to reshuffle round one and rush the two Sydney teams to Brisbane to play their round one match.
The Sydney Swifts and Giants will rush to Queensland this week with the opening round of Super Netball reshuffled due to tightened border restrictions, AAP reports.
The Giants were set to host West Coast Fever on Saturday in Sydney, while the Swifts and Adelaide Thunderbirds were slated to play on Sunday, also at Ken Rosewall Arena.
But Wednesday’s announcement that Queensland will close its borders to all residents of greater Sydney, from 1am on Saturday because of rising coronavirus infections, has forced a round one reshuffle.
The two Sydney outfits will fly north on Thursday to begin their campaigns in Brisbane.
They will square off on Sunday at Brisbane’s Nissan Arena, while the Thunderbirds and Fever will bypass Sydney and meet in a round one match on Saturday in a double-header.
Updated
The president of the Australian Medical Association has called on the federal government to “pursue a more ambitious emissions reductions target” to protect people’s health during bushfires.
Dr Tony Bartone told a senate inquiry that the summer’s horror bushfires were a health crisis which could have “decades” of health impacts for Australians.
He said the government needs to “commit to a national strategy for health and climate change”, and reduce carbon emissions.
We were not prepared for the world’s worst air quality. Future preparation must involve general practitioners ... GPs were not included in local disaster plans yet it was GPs that patients went to.
He said the AMA’s “key recommendation” was that GPs be more involved in fire response plans.
Updated
More than 2million reusable face masks will be distributed to vulnerable Victorians. Inc: people w- disability, in public housing, experiencing mental health or family violence, youth in resi facilities & human services workers.
— Luke Donnellan MP (@LukeDonnellan) July 29, 2020
More info here: https://t.co/xn2HY0THDY pic.twitter.com/sHVNMdMCFB
Some good news for NDIS participants that was announced by the minister, Stuart Robert, today.
BREAKING from @NDIS - you can use core support funding to purchase masks if more than 1 hour a day face-to-face support if in Victoria or NSW
— Anne Kavanagh (@Kavanagh_AM) July 29, 2020
👇👇👇#MaskUpVictoria https://t.co/LkAdnu2frR
Today I've announced temporary changes to funding arrangements to allow #NDIS participants in Victoria and New South Wales to claim the cost of personal protective equipment (PPE), including masks. Visit https://t.co/xovNVODHnB for more info. pic.twitter.com/lS3raOddt0
— Stuart Robert MP (@stuartrobertmp) July 29, 2020
Updated
While much attention has rightly been paid to the 419 aged care staff in Victoria with Covid-19, it is important to note there are now 502 health care workers in the state, including doctors and nurses who have active cases of infection. That’s 81 more health workers than Tuesday.
It comes at a time when residents from aged care are urgently being moved into the state’s private and public hospitals.
The state government has been providing data on which aged care homes are affected including the number of residents and aged care staff with the virus. I have asked the office of the premier, health minister and the department of health for the same data relating to hospitals for weeks. They have not provided it. Health workers themselves want the data so they can better understand how the infections are occurring, and where. While some hospitals provide daily updates to staff, in other hospitals this information only goes to the executives.
I just spoke to the president of the Victorian branch of the Australian Medical Association, Dr Julian Rait, who is also struggling to get a hold of the data to keep his members informed. The Association represents registered medical practitioners and medical students of Australia. Rait told me:
I’ve been pestering the department for the data and they told me a week ago they would provide me with data by Monday or Tuesday this week including data showing how many health worker infections are community versus workplace acquired. They still haven’t provided it. It’s completely unacceptable. There could be things in the data to inform policy around PPE [personal protective equipment] and the settings health workers are dealing with. We need to know how many health care workers are getting infected in the workplace. I’m anxious to see this data.
If you’re a health care worker in Victoria with information, feel free to contact me melissa.davey@theguardian.com.
Updated
The Australian government says it will work with the US to help countries across the Indo-Pacific region respond to infectious disease outbreaks and other health emergencies.
While a lot of the initial media reporting of yesterday’s Ausmin talks in Washington focused on defence cooperation and policies towards China, the meeting also resulted in an agreement on health security.
The Ausmin Global Health Security Statement says there “has never been a more vital time to strengthen global health security” because Covid-19 “is just one example of the rising trend of diseases caused by viruses that have jumped from animal hosts into the human population”:
The United States and Australia look forward to continuing to work together bilaterally, and regionally including in relevant regional organizations, and in international forums, to promote an Indo-Pacific region that is safe and secure from the threats posed by infectious diseases and to reduce the risks of future pandemics.
The allies want to strengthen public health emergency operations centres and conduct simulation exercises in countries including Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar. They are also planning to virtually co-convene a second Southeast Asia Health Security Donor Coordination Meeting later this year.
They will explore ways “to collaboratively build Indo-Pacific partner capacity in biosecurity, biosafety, and bio-surveillance to prevent, detect, and respond to infectious disease outbreaks caused by especially dangerous pathogens, through laboratory placements for participants from the Greater Mekong Subregion in Australian research institutions, as well as joint biosafety training”.
In a press release issued this afternoon, Australia’s foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne, said the allies would also “work with countries in the region to improve hygiene conditions, and mitigate zoonotic disease and pandemic risks associated with wildlife wet markets”.
Updated
Nick Kyrgios is not letting this issue go.
You should care. Do you have rocks in your head? Again, you can stand up for your mates, I’m just trying to hold them accountable. When I said what I said, I didn’t intend to bother. They are tennis players, they aren’t special. Just as I thought Coric intellectual level = 0 (🍩) https://t.co/KNBa5mNG77
— Nicholas Kyrgios (@NickKyrgios) July 29, 2020
In case you don’t know what this is all about, see here:
Hello to you all. A mighty thanks to Calla for her efforts today.
I’ll be with you into the evening. If you want to get in touch (either with a news tip, a thought, or because you’ve created some sort of Brett Sutton-related ephemera), send me an email at luke.henriques-gomes@theguardian.com or a note on Twitter @lukehgomes.
On that note I will leave you in the hands of Luke Henriques-Gomes who will take you through the afternoon.
I’m torn between encouraging Melburnians in lockdown to channel their energy into making art, and advising against freaking out the Victorian chief health officer by buying a face mask featuring a (admittedly very good and locally drawn) illustration of his face. So just stay safe and try not to alarm any public health professionals.
Updated
Victoria has recorded 1,431 cases of Covid-19 in the past seven days, according to the state’s department of health and human services.
DHHS sent out the full list of cases so I want to run through some of the most significant numbers.
Firstly, as of today there are 4,839 active cases of Covid-19 in Victoria – that’s 1,431 more than last Wednesday, 22 July.
Forty-eight people have died in Victoria the past week after testing positive to Covid-19. Victoria has now recorded 92 deaths in people positive to Covid-19 since 1 January.
There are now 1,418 cases classified as indicating community transmission in Victoria, up 302 from this time last week. The state’s chief health officer, Prof Brett Sutton, said earlier that about 50 cases were being added to that list every day.
There are now 307 people with Covid-19 in hospital and 41 in intensive care, an increase of 102 people in hospital from this time last week. Premier Daniel Andrews said part of that increase is due to aged care residents being moved to hospital.
There are now 804 active cases associated with aged care outbreaks, up 421 from last week. And 315 more healthcare workers have tested positive to Covid-19 in the past week. As of today there are 502 active cases.
And in the past seven days Victoria has performed an additional 168,100 Covid-19 tests. As of today, 1.5m tests have been performed in Victoria since 1 January.
Updated
Hunt says that private aged care facilities have higher rates of infection than public, state-run aged care facilities in Victoria because most of the state-run facilities are located in regional Victoria, outside of hotspot areas.
He repeated that the outbreaks in aged care in Victoria now are not the same as the outbreaks in Newmarch House in Sydney.
We warned right from the outset that a major community transmission outbreak would have the greatest risks to our elderly. It has been one of our extraordinary achievements that outside of Victoria we have been able to protect and to prevent against this, but where there is major infection, then that reaches in to all different elements and parts of the community.
Updated
Aged care residents have made up 7% of all new coronavirus cases reported in Victoria since 1 July, and 5% since 1 April, Hunt said.
But they are the most vulnerable which is why from the outset we have put all our resources there. And then are facing in one state – with no criticism, no reflection, but a reality that we set out very early on that this could be any one at any time, any state at any time.
That is why we have out of these additional resources to deal with the fact that so many members of the health and medical workforce have had to either leave, because they have been diagnosed positive, and for each one of those you have a ripple effect of multiples of others that have had to be diagnosed. And have had to isolate as well.
Again, you’ll recall that yesterday Hunt strongly linked the Victorian aged care crisis back to failures of the hotel quarantine regime, but today there is “no criticism” on offer.
Updated
Asked why aged care wasn’t prepared, Hunt said “aged care around the country has been immensely prepared”.
We have had, prior to the Victorian outbreak, less than half a percent of facilities affected, and what we saw here in Victoria was an outbreak which affects workplaces, which affects whether it is officers, meatworks, school environments, hospitals... there is a major outbreak.
You may recall Hunt said yesterday that the outbreak was foreseeable but not preventable.
About 500 nurses and other healthcare workers have been pulled in to supplement the aged care workforce so far. McMillan said she was grateful for that work.
They have been absolutely fantastic. Stepping out of their normal workplace and going into unusual places and really taking a strong leadership in managing that situation. And as I speak, colleagues from across the country, nurses, are coming to help us with this response, and we look forward to seeing more.
The chief nursing and midwifery officer Alison McMillan, who is the lead health advisor on the aged care response, urged aged care workers to use counselling and support services if needed.
My first message today is to all of those workers in our aged care sector at home... This is a very challenging time for all of us, and particularly for you as the focus of your work comes under scrutiny. We do rely on you to care for those most vulnerable in our community and to support them through this difficult time.
So you do need to look after your own health and wellbeing as well, and I remind everyone in the sector, direct care workers, nurses, doctors, cleaners, cooks, support workers, ambulance officers and ambulance paramedics that there are support services out there for you during this time and it is important to look after yourself. Ao I encourage you to do that because there is a focus on your work.
Updated
Buffone said managing workforce shortfalls was the biggest issue.
I want to reassure all of the workers out there that we are doing everything to make sure that their safety is looked after, and that is in line with PPE distribution and we have made sure that there are no distribution issues and we keep monitoring that. We will make sure that we will get PPE out of the facilities where they are needed.
He added:
I can reassure you, everybody is doing everything possible to try to identify quickly, rapidly respond, control and then a focus on prevention. This is something that everybody plays a part in. No single person, no single organisation, no single government can deal with this issue. This is an absolute joint response. And I just want to reiterate: our focus is caring for residents for their safety and the primacy of life.
Joe Buffone, an emergency management expert who usually works in firefighting, is managing the aged care joint response centre in Melbourne. He says it is an “unprecedented and extremely complex and difficult situation”.
Buffone said the joint centre is looking at and prioritising aged care outbreaks to ensure that “decisions around disease control are directly linked to operational decisions to maintain the functionality of that facility, but still with the focus on the care and safety of those residents”.
He said the centre is also focused on providing a rapid response”.
That is about rapidly getting to the worst case situation and supporting those facilities. The key point here is that the operator and owner of that facility has the responsibility to look after the care and safety of those residents and we are responding and supporting those operators too.
He said the first thing they have agreed is that the hospital system will “outreach into these facilities” – that’s moving hospital nurses in, as Andrews announced yesterday.
Ausmat teams will be used to “bolster our rapid intervention so that when we have these complex outbreaks that escalate quickly, we have the leadership team, the multidisciplinary team to help stabilise the situation, support the owner and operator of the facility, to make sure that the residents there are looked after”.
Updated
The federal health minister, Greg Hunt, has been speaking about the aged care response in Melbourne, from the joint response centre which was stood up this week. He noted the number of deaths in Victoria overnight, and said it was a “difficult day”.
Hunt said that 5% of all Covid-19 cases reported in Victoria since April are people in residential aged care.
As of 9.30am, he said, there are 440 aged care residents who are positive to Covid-19, and 27 aged care facilities with at least one positive resident.
You’ll note those figures are slightly different to the ones I set out below, which are from the Victorian government.
Updated
I wanted to set out some of the numbers for the aged care outbreaks in Victoria.
In total there are 804 active Covid-19 cases spread across 87 facilities – though the majority are at about a dozen facilities, many others just have one or two positive cases.
Of those 804 cases, 474 are residents and 419 are staff. An additional 59 people are contact cases.
These figures do not include people who have died after testing positive to Covid-19. To date, 46 people have died in connection to the aged care outbreaks.
The worst outbreaks are:
- Estia aged care facility in Ardeer. Ninety-one cases total, including 49 residents, 41 staff members, and one close contact.
- St Basil’s home for the aged in Fawkner. Eighty-nine cases total, including 56 residents, 28 staff members, and five close contacts.
- Epping Gardens aged care in Epping. Eighty-six total cases, including 59 residents and 27 staff members.
- Kirkbrae Presbyterian homes in Kilsyth. Seventy-nine cases total, including 41 residents, 30 staff members and eight close contacts.
- Menarock Life aged care facility in Essendon. Sixty-two total cases, including 19 residents, 25 staff members and 18 close contacts.
- Estia aged care facility in Heidelberg. Fifty-six total cases, including 20 residents, 34 staff members and two close contacts.
- Glendale aged care facility in Werribee. Fifty-four total cases, including 26 residents, 19 staff members and two close contacts.
- BaptCare Wyndham Lodge in Werribee. Fifty-one total cases, including 26 residents, 24 staff members and one close contact.
- Outlook Gardens aged care facility in Dandenong North. Forty-four total cases, 19 residents, 21 staff members, four close contacts.
- Arcare aged care facility in Cragieburn. Forty-one total cases, including 24 residents, 17 staff members.
Updated
Labor’s foreign affairs spokesperson, Penny Wong, has commented on the Ausmin meeting held in Washington DC overnight and said that Australia’s key focus must always be to “protect and promote Australia’s national interests, in a world that has become more unstable”. You can read Daniel Hurst’s report on that meeting here.
Wong said Ausmin was “the single most important opportunity in which Australia can express our interests within our alliance with the United States, which of course remains our principal security relationship and has strong bipartisan support”.
Beyond the Ausmin alliance, of course, we have always made it clear that Australia needs to work closely with aligned nations, so we work both with our allies and with aligned nations, to protect and promote Australia’s national interests, in a world that has become more unstable, and in which the strategic outlook for Australia has been becoming more challenging.
The key focus for Australia must always be our national interest and our national interests lie in shaping the sort of region we want to be in. A region that is stable and prosperous, but in which sovereignty is respected, in which international law is respected, where disputes are dealt we in a way that does not escalate and consistent with international norms.
On the agreement to allow the US to establish a military fuel reserve in Australia, Wong said:
Whilst Labor welcomes that initiative, we would make the point that we have been saying for some time there is a clear need for a domestic fuel security policy, which not only stores fuel in Australia, but ensures that we are in compliance with International Energy Agency obligations.
You may recall that this issue came up at the start of the pandemic, when it was revealed we did not comply with International Energy Agency obligations to have 90-days of fuel on hand.
Wong also criticised the Australian government for not pushing harder on the trade deal between the US and China, which she said could disadvantage Australian farmers and exporters.
We have an arrangement between president Trump and president Xi which commits to $40m worth of agricultural product going into China for two years, $40bn a year. That is a very large amount of product. We already have seen expressions of concern thatAustralian farmers and exporters could be negatively affected by this and I would welcome the government making clear they are advocating to the US that Australian farmers are not collateral in that trade agreement.
Updated
Western Australian has recorded two new cases of coronavirus
Western Australia has recorded two new cases of Covid-19, both in returned travellers in hotel quarantine.
The two people who tested positive are a man in his 70s and a man in his 30s.
It brings the state’s total number of Covid-19 cases since 1 January to 661.
Updated
Police in NSW have charged a 45-year-old woman from Ambarvale with assaulting hospital staff after she allegedly kicked at a nurse and spat and and bit a security guard at the Liverpool hospital in Sydney.
In a statement police said they were called to Liverpool Hospital just after 7am yesterday.
On arrival, police were told the woman had refused to leave despite having been discharged and allegedly abused nursing staff and security using offensive language as they attempted to get her to leave.
It’s further alleged that as security escorted her from the building, the woman spat on the face of one of the guards and threatened him, bit another guard on the hand, and kicked at them and a nurse.
The woman was charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm, three counts of common assault, offensive behaviour, and other offences.
She was also charged under public health orders for spitting in the hospital, and refused bail to appear in court today.
In an unrelated incident, police said, they fined the owner of a bakery in Kogarah $5,000 for failing to comply with Covid-19 requirements by not keeping a register of patrons who dined-in.
Bureau of meteorology provided 'more than 100' briefings about increased bushfire risk last year
The Bureau of Meteorology provided “more than 100” briefings to government about the increased risk of bushfires ahead of Australia’s horror summer, a Senate inquiry has heard.
The chief executive officer of the bureau, Dr Andrew Johnson, said this included briefing the federal environment minister, Sussan Ley, in August and December 2019 about the “increased bushfire risk”.
He told the Senate inquiry into the bushfires:
The bureau provided extensive briefings to all three levels of government, as is the norm, leading into summer.
The advice from all stakeholders was the conditions were of concern.
The inquiry heard from a range of climate scientists earlier on Wednesday, and Johnson was also asked by Labor MP Murray Watt about the link between bushfires and global heating.
He said that long-term warming and drying, in bushfire areas, is “strongly linked to climate change”.
There is a very strong link between global warming and the overall warming trend we have seen in Australia ... and the sharp drop off in rainfall in south-west Western Australia for example.
He added that this advice was “nothing new” and was “openly available” to the general public as well as parliamentarians.
The bureau does not take positions on things, we merely report and observe the environment.
Bushfire is a challenging subject. Weather is only one part of the fire story.
Updated
He really does look exhausted.
Dan Andrews looking and sounding bloody EXHAUSTED. He just mentioned his "lack of sleep". Clearly the man needs rest. Do your bit, Victorians, and we can all get back to normal. And give the man a day off. @newscomauHQ
— Rohan Smith (@Ro_Smith) July 29, 2020
For those keeping count: this is the 27th straight day in which Daniel Andrews has given the Covid-19 update. Time to tag someone else in and have a nap.
Updated
You might have read the post earlier in which my colleague Paul Karp asked Scott Morrison what he was doing on the issue of paid pandemic leave, and Morrison said he was discussing it with industrial relations minister Christian Porter.
The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) also heard that question, and provided us with this comment from secretary Sally McManus:
We welcome the prime minister asking minister Porter to discuss with unions how we can implement paid pandemic leave across Australia. We are seeing how one in three workers not having any access to paid leave is leaving a hole in Australia’s defences against Covid-19 and that government funded paid pandemic leave is an essential public health measure to support people to get tested, isolate and stop the spread of Covid-19.
Updated
Closing the Queensland border to greater Sydney does, of course, have an impact on professional sport.
More details on that and what it will mean for the ever-changing AFL and NRL hubs, here:
Updated
Berejiklian says closing its borders to Sydney will hurt Queensland more than it hurts NSW
Gladys Berejiklian has taken a swipe at Annastacia Palaszczuk’s decision to close Queensland’s border Sydney, telling reporters it “hurts the smaller states” to shut themselves off from New South Wales and saying “it would have been nice if she told me” about the decision.
In her press conference earlier today, Palaszczuk announced Queensland would declare all of greater Sydney a Covid hotspot and close its border to anyone from the city from 1pm on Saturday, saying “we must protect Queensland”.
Speaking at the same time in Sydney, Berejiklian confirmed she had not been given prior warning of the decision but said it was a matter for Queensland.
That’s a matter for the Queensland government, and a matter for her. I note the cases they’ve had up there announced today are all from Victoria, and the case in South Australia is from Victoria.
In the end it hurts the smaller states when they don’t interact with NSW. It hurts us less if you talk about the economy ... It’s obviously up to other jurisdictions on what decisions they take. The only challenge for NSW is limited freedom of movement for residents but if you’re talking about the economic consequences it hurts Queensland or South Australia or WA much more than it hurts NSW.
Asked if she was informed of Queensland’s decision prior to the announcement Berejiklian said:
No, no, nope, no.
It would have been nice if she told me, but that’s fine.
Updated
Finally, Andrews was asked about prime minister Scott Morrison calling the outbreak the “Victorian wave,” not a second wave.
This is a comment that came in the context of both Morrison and Andrews saying they had boundless respect for each other.
Said Andrews:
What is called is not a concern to me. The only thing I am focused on is defeating this virus. In saving lives and getting us to the other side of the second wave as fast as we possibly can.
But I can’t do that on my own. That is why I have to stand here every day and ask people to continue doing a lot, and if I could do it another way, if giving a speech or passing a law was a vaccine for this thing, then of course we would do that. But it isn’t.
We all had to acknowledge, premiers, prime ministers, doctors, nurses, punters, all of us, we have to follow the rules. We have to continue to work hard. We have to continue to make sure that we are in our own decisions contributing to less virus, not more, less infections, not more, less hospitalisation, less death, not more. That is just where we find ourselves. What it is called is of no concern to me.
He ended the press conference by thanking all Victorians, “whether you are in Melbourne, Mitchell shire, the smallest country town at the farthest point from Melbourne, thank you so much for doing the right thing, thank you so much for the contribution you are making”.
Andrews was asked if parliament was returning next week and in what form, and laughed at something said in the room before apologising for laughing.
I am sure it is a product of the humour of your joke, but also lack of sleep. Maybe, but I am sorry to laugh. It is not a day for laughter.
I think it can be forgiven.
Updated
On the outbreak in Colac, in southwest Victoria, which is the largest regional outbreak, Sutton said the vast majority of cases have been traced back to the abattoir outbreak.
We do need to keep an eye on those other cases in Colac that may not be related to that outbreak or may not be able to be linked back to that outbreak. That is a consideration for Colac as it is for all regional areas, so it is really a question on digging down to those cases to understand if there is some community cases that don’t have an obvious source because they are the ones of concern.
But at the moment for Colac, it is overwhelmingly related to an outbreak where we are following up on quarantining those close contacts and there have been very broad testing across those entire workforce.
A very difficult question for chief health officer, Brett Sutton. Can families see a loved one who died after testing positive to Covid-19 when they are laid out? Or is there a risk?
Sutton:
In relation to individuals being potentially infectious after they have died, I am actually not sure what the science has said. But in the same way that we give exemptions for relatives to visit their family members during a time of end-of-life care, those same exemptions could apply after someone has died. There is no reason that we couldn’t consider those exemptions and allow them with PPE as an absolutely precautionary measure to be able to see their loved ones. I certainly wouldn’t want anyone to believe that they have got no opportunity to see a loved one after they have died.
He added that people would not have to wear that level of PPE at a funeral. I’m reasonably certain the face covering rule would still apply, though.
Premier Daniel Andrews is back at the podium now, talking about the aged care response.
On St Basil’s home for the aged in Fawkner, he said the federal and state governments stepped in because a significant number of staff had tested positive and “there was not confidence that they could be contained, they could not infect residents that didn’t have the virus”.
So the appropriate decision was made to send them home. That’s not out of step with what happens with aged care more broadly … Clearly the task was probably bigger than anybody thought, and on that basis additional staff had to be sent in.
Asked if it would have been more appropriate to bring in additional nursing staff and then transition back to aged care staff, Andrews replied:
Not if staff were not wearing protective equipment.
He added:
In fact, it is a certainty that you have not done what we did would have meant more people finished up with this virus. That is the judgment that we made.
Is it an ideal circumstance you have to furlough a workforce as quickly and bluntly is that? No, of course not. But that is what you are confronted with. And I just put it to you that, you know, looking back at these things ... I have barely got time to do it, but just humour me. What’s the alternative?
The alternative is: ‘Oh well, this will be incredibly disruptive. Let’s just leave those staff there. We haven’t got a lot of confidence that they won’t spread it. In fact, we are certain that they will. But let’s leave them there because it will be a difficult and inconvenient thing.’
No, that is not the decision that was made, and what’s more, everyone threw everything they could have that problem. It turned out that the challenge was probably beyond – no sense of criticism of anybody – but the challenge was probably beyond those that were tasked to do that. That’s why we very quickly added in extra staff, and indeed [got] residents out. At that aged care facility, at every aged care facility, whether it be commonwealth support, state support, public hospital, private hospital, ambulance, paramedics, public health team, everyone is doing their level best. This is incredibly challenging, incredibly challenging. And that’s why everyone is working really hard.
Updated
Sutton said on Monday, when Victoria recorded the record high of 532 Covid-19 cases, that the modelling indicated that could be the peak of the second wave.
He says he will not say outright that Victoria has passed that point, as it reaches the halfway point of the initial six-week lockdown period.
I will not make a declaration that we have passed the peak. There is both the modelling that we need to help make informed decisions about what additional interventions might be required, or whether we carry on with the settings, the policy settings that we have, but there is the real numbers every day that we have to watch as well.
You cannot make assumptions on modelling. It doesn’t predict the future. There are important insights that you can gain from the modelling, the kind of range it tells you, about where you are headed, but you cannot say we have passed a peak. There is nothing else to consider here. We have to watch the numbers every day.
So I certainly wouldn’t say we have definitely passed the peak. We absolutely have to keep watching every day. And part of the challenge is, when you have got significant numbers, if it gets into another cohort, as it has very significantly in aged care settings, the ability for outbreaks to occur and for numbers to really increase is very substantial. And so, you know, we could get a number of aged care facilities with 50, 60, 70 cases occurring in a day. That will change the numbers. That will also put at risk the broader community, if a lot of aged care staff are then infecting their family, because they are infectious before they have developed symptoms, going home.
Sutton was asked about the Ausmat teams, which will begin arriving in Victoria tomorrow.
Having been an Ausmat worker myself and deployed overseas, there is a real mix of expertise for Ausmateers.
They will be largely medical in expertise but they come with really broad epidemiological experience. There’s a lot of disaster management experience that they have, the logistical support of Ausmat is very critical as well. So there is a really broad skill set, and they area very valuable additional surge for us.
Sutton said there were 55 community transmission cases recorded overnight, and that has been the daily average – about 50 new cases from community transmission each day.
We have a number of cases that are called under investigation. They have almost all been interviewed, but there might be a tentative link, further contact to explore, a further work setting that ends up getting linked to a known outbreak where we can then definitively say that is linked to an outbreak or it is an unknown source, it is a community transmission case.
Community transmission in Victoria 'relatively stable'
I misled you earlier – the chief health officer, Prof Brett Sutton, is here.
Apologies, Suttonites.
He says that community transmission numbers in Victoria “have remained relatively stable” in recent days.
The real contribution in today’s numbers, as for the last week or two, have been outbreak driven, and so the aged care numbers, the increase in each of those facilities on a daily basis, will be a significant contributor, including the staff in those facilities. And our other outbreaks, especially the larger ones, are another significant contributor.
So if you take out the outbreak numbers, I think we are actually looking at relatively few community cases. It hasn’t gone down as much as I would have liked. The number of cases that are so-called community transmission, where the acquisition isn’t known, where the source isn’t known, has remained relatively stable. Not great numbers, but not going down as much as I would like.
Updated
On today’s numbers being considerably lower than the high recorded on Monday – about 240 fewer cases reported – Andrews said he was “not reading into numbers each day”.
Obviously it’s always pleasing when there are less numbers than more but at the same time, trends are not made in one day. We need to see these number sover a longer period.
He added:
What I would say on restrictions, we still have numbers that are way too high.
It is odd that we’re now in a situation the reaction is “only 295!” not “oh no, 295”. Not so long ago, these kind of numbers would have been unthinkable.
The Australian chief scientist Alan Finkel has been in contact with the Victorian public health team to help cut down the time to get test results, Andrews said.
Individuals are alerted or told about their positive or negative result and then it can take some time to those results to come to the public health team. If we can get a head start, I know that Alan Finkel is helping with that and more broadly, my advice is laboratories are working very, very hard.
He said Victoria had one of the highest testing rates in the world.
Andrews was asked about the stop work protest at the JBS abattoir in Brooklyn yesterday, supported by United Voice.
He said he would not comment on that particular business, or the stop work action, “other than to say that as a result of that, there has been changes made there and I think they are doing staggered breaks and not crowding into a very small space when they are having downtime”.
That’s obviously positive and a very good thing.
Andrews said WorkSafe has done “a couple of hundred of inspections” at meatworks and other high risk workplaces.
No business wants this. Nobody wants that because it means they will have to shut down and they will have to do a clean and they are there to do what they need to do, keep us fed and make a profit for their owners. I don’t see there are sectors or employers that aren’t taking this seriously. All my advice is that people are stepping up to that end, that’s why WorkSafe inspectors are out there. We all benefit from this strategy working. We will have to contribute to it.
Updated
Andrews said there is a “special and urgent response” in place whenever an outbreak is reported in an aged care setting, even if it’s just one case.
I think we are confident everything with that can be done is being done. It’s a significant, and when it’s a talk about entire workforce is being sent home, if you have a nursing home with 20-odd staff who have this virus, there’s no choice but... the alternative would be to have them working and infect every single person in the place. You can’t do that. I know that throws on significant challenges.
That is why every day is a long day. That’s why I was on the phone to Brendan Murphy last night. Every aged care setting where there is a positive case, it’s a unique risk and a massive challenge and that’s why we are stepping up so many resources. That’s why we need to close beds and surgery.
More on the fight that he’s not having with the federal government:
I stand here for an hour everyday and I try and answer every single question and I do answer every question and I try to do it is frankly and clearly as possible.
Can I pick you up on the first part of your question, I don’t agree with your assessment of the Commonwealth. I have a very important productive and respectful relationship with the PM, there is a mutual regard where it is serving the interests of every single Victorian. As I said, any talk about fights and arguments is wrong. It might make good copy but it’s wrong, couldn’t be clearer, the only fight I am engaged in is a fight against this deadly virus and that will not change, my exclusive focus and continues to be.
The prime minister, Scott Morrison, also said at his press conference a short time ago how much respect he has for Andrews and the respect they have for each other. Such a lot of respect is gratifying, I am sure.
Andrews was asked about reports that the secretary of the federal health department, Prof Brendan Murphy, first requested Victoria cancel its non-urgent elective surgery on 15 July but it did not happen until yesterday.
Andrews:
That’s not what he said at all.
Andrews said there were discussions with the federal government about it on Sunday night and the Victorian cabinet made a decision on Monday.
Short of taking people off operating tables, it could be done no faster and proof of that, and the fact that it’s had no impact on the amazing work that our staff have done, both public and private hospital staff, other numbers of transports I’ve just read out to you.
He added:
Just ahead of any other questions, the only argument, fight that matters is the fight against this deadly virus. That’s what I am focused on. I haven’t got times for these other games. All of us, the prime minister and I, our health officials and Commonwealth officials are all focused on getting this job done.
The commentary is that Andrews fired the first shots in his press conference yesterday, heaping issues in aged care on the federal government. Which he did. But it’s still a distraction.
Before we get to questions I want to apologise for saying the chief health officer, Prof Brett Sutton, would be here. He is not, the health minister Jenny Mikakos is.
Andrews also went through a list of employers and industry groups, which he thanked for telling their staff or members not to go to work when sick.
They are:
Trades Hall, the MasterBuilders, HIA, the Property Council, Trades Hall, Bunnings, the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Australian Industry Group, VCOSS, too many meatworks and abattoirs to mention, Coles, Woolworths, Aldi, the Australian Hotels Association and Australian Retailers Association.
Andrews said 80 residents have been transferred out of the facility at St Basil’s home for the aged. At Epping Gardens, 34 residents have been transferred out, and Kirkbrae aged care has had 30 residents moved to hospital. Another 21 aged care residents have been transferred out from other facilities.
In general terms, the best way to understand this effort is that if it’s an emergency transfer, those residents will go to a public hospital. It’s a planned transfer where there can be some lead-in time, they will go to the private sector.
Updated
Andrews said nurses from the Victorian public hospital system, and ADF medics, have already filled in 400 shifts in aged care.
That is a massive, massive task and each and every one of those nurses and personal care workers who are behind that 400, who called into very challenging environments, environments in crisis, to support vulnerable residents, to get on and get it done. I want to say thank you so much on behalf of every single Victorian.
He said that at the Heritage Care Epping Gardens aged care home, nurses from Austin Health, Ramsay Health, as well as ADF medics are helping with the aged care response.
Eastern Health have closed 43 beds to free up staff to support. Outlook Gardens in Dandenong North being supported by Monash Health, I don’t have exact numbers of how many staff in there but it’s a challenging set of circumstances and Monash Health is the public provider working closely and carefully with that particular provider. At St Basil’s, Northern Health and Epworth private hospital are providing stuff as well as the Commonwealth.
Andrews said he will increase the number of people out knocking on doors as part of the contact tracing effort from 58 people, across 18 teams, to 90 people.
From today, we will increase that to around 90 staff and each and every positive case, everyone who gets a positive result from the laboratory will be door knocked and visited by an ADF and DHHS team. Not just for compliance but making sure that every single positive case knows and understands what we are asking them to do and what they need to do and it’s an opportunity for us to say to them, what do you need from us, what can we do to support you and obviously [ask about] unique circumstances.
Every family is different, it’s as much about support, reassurance and information as it is about compliance.
I can indicate however there have been 29 of those door-knocks where people could not be found at home. They’ve been referred to Victoria Police. I’ve got no further comment to make or any further details as to what if any action has been taken against those people but it’s a significant issue. If you are supposed to be at home isolating, you are supposed to be at home doing just that.
Except that the chief health officer, Brett Sutton, revealed yesterday that the Victorian public health orders cannot legally stop someone from going out to exercise – they’re just asked to do it at home wherever possible. Something to keep in mind.
Andrews said he would provide numbers tomorrow around how many people have applied for the $300 hardship payment to get tested for Covid-19, and $1,500 payment if they test positive.
He reemphasised that anyone with any symptoms should not go to work, and should self-isolate at home until they get tested and until they get that test result.
Active Covid-19 cases in the Victorian aged care sector top 800
Andrews said there were now 804 cases connected to the aged care sector, both staff and residents, and 502 cases among healthcare workers.
There are 4,849 active cases of Covid-19 now, 9,304 in total since 1 January, and 195 of the active cases are in regional areas.
Andrews said further regional health teams have been stood up to respond to the regional cases and conduct contact tracing.
Updated
Victoria records 295 new cases of coronavirus and nine more deaths
The Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, is speaking now and says the state has recorded 295 new cases of coronavirus in the past 24 hours and sadly, nine people have died.
The people who died were aged in their 60s to their 90s, and seven of the nine are connected to aged care.
There are now 307 Victorians in hospital, 41 in intensive care.
Updated
Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk was speaking in Bundaberg a short time ago about her decision to extend hard border restrictions to all of greater Sydney.
There has been more outbreaks in other parts of greater Sydney and that will now become a Covid-19 declared hotspot effective 1am Saturday morning, and we have done that so we can give notice to Queenslanders that may have returned home or may want to return home. And it will cause inconvenience to families and I know there may be many events planned over the next few days, few weeks but it is too important. We must protect Queenslanders. Your safety comes first and we are in extraordinary times at the moment. We have to do everything we can so that would take effect 1am Saturday morning.
As I said yesterday, Queenslanders should not be travelling to Sydney. The greater Sydney area will encompass 34 local government areas, that will be 31 new areas plus the three existing areas. We have to act swiftly and that is exactly what my government is doing.
She said it was “extremely disappointing” that Queensland had recorded two new cases in the community from people who allegedly travelled from Victoria.
We have done this before and we would do it again but because of the negligent actions of these two we now have to do a lot of contact tracing and it is going to be an inconvenience to many people but it has to be done.
Updated
We are standing by waiting to hear the Victorian coronavirus figures, which means we will be hearing from the chief health officer, Brett Sutton.
And on that issue, can I just say to fans of the CHO... please do less.
Fancy a @VictorianCHO blanket? Perhaps a tote? https://t.co/cn818EgcDF #blinkblink
— Mary-Jane Fenech (@mary_janef) July 29, 2020
The consumer price index dropped by 1.9% in the June quarter
From AAP:
The prices paid on consumer goods dropped by 1.9% in the June quarter, the largest fall in the 72-year history of the consumer price index.
The result was mainly the result of free childcare and preschool policies in several states, as well as a 19.3% slide in the price of petrol.
“Excluding these three components, the CPI would have risen 0.1 per cent in the June quarter,” Australian Bureau of Statistics chief economist Bruce Hockman said.
Updated
Asked why that was taking so long, Murphy said:
You do not do these reviews until things are completely settled down and there is a calm, you don’t do the review when things are still active.
The Newmarch review was a very long and complex process and it had to be done remotely because people were in different states so it has taken about three or four weeks and it is being written up in the moment. It will also be provided to the royal commission and come into the public domain.
The lessons we’ve talked about on many occasions. The lessons are that you need to cohort people, you need to do communications. Newmarch, the most important lesson was communications with families of the biggest breakdown. The care and infection control was strong. One of the lessons that Newmarch was bringing in very good infection control experts, which NSW Health did, and having really good PPE.
Updated
Prof Brendan Murphy said the report on the outbreak at Newmarch aged care centre has not been completed yet, and the report on the Dorothy Henderson Lodge is currently before the royal commission into aged care.
That will make it in the public domain because the royal commission into aged care has had a significant interest in these outbreaks in aged care. That will be published on the royal commission website.
Updated
Morrison was also asked about his senior aid, Nico Louw, who is in self-isolation after being exposed to Covid-19 at Sydney’s Apollo restaurant.
Morrison:
I suspect he’s been giving Netflix a lot of workout and I hope he’s been doing a lot of briefs.
Updated
My colleague Paul Karp asked for more detail on the conversations around paid pandemic leave, and asks why those conversations were only happening now when unions have been calling for paid pandemic leave for months.
Morrison told Paul he had already answered that question earlier this week.
On the issue of state border closures, and particularly the high court action former MP and mining magnate Clive Palmer is bringing against WA for its hard border closure, Morrison said the federal government was interested in that action because it “goes to quite serious constitutional issues on which theCommonwealth could not be silent about”.
My concern is that it is highly likely that the constitutional position that is being reviewed in this case will not fall in the Western Australian government’s favour. And what I am keen to do is to engage with the Western Australian government to ensure that we can have appropriate health protections for the people of Western Australia to ensure that there is not transmission.
He said there was a need to restrict movement to and from outbreak areas but he did not support an “all or nothing approach” to the creation of hard borders.
The constitutional position is one that provides that fellow Australians can follow free movement and that should not be prevented. There are much more broader consequences of this case to go beyond specifically the pandemic and that is why the Commonwealth responsibly has to be able to put the responsible constitutional position. This is not done in aid of Clive Palmer in any way shape or form, in no way at all. I warned the states and territories that if they make arbitrary positions on borders that they are likely to find themselves in this situation, that someone is likely to bring a case and this may well a constitutional position and that would not be to their advantage.
He added:
I’m concerned about the combative way this is unfolded in Western Australia and I would like to find a much more productive way forward.
Under the coronavirus recovery plan announced in late April, the federal government was hoping that Australia would be largely opened up by July.
The outbreak in Melbourne changed that.
Morrison said he can’t now guess when Australia might be in the position to fully open up again, but said he is “encouraged” by what he has seen in NSW tracking and tracing the outbreak there.
Basically, he is encouraged by every state and territory except Victoria.
I think once we get a better read on where these numbers are in Victoria and hopefully we will see better numbers from Victoria today, but we do not know.
Morrison said he had discussed the issue of paid pandemic leave with the industrial relations minister.
And as you know their ongoing discussions between government employee groups and employees on a range of issues around managing the pandemic. And that be one of them.
Back in Canberra, prime minister Scott Morrison said the federal government was not too slow to act on moving in on the Covid-19 outbreak in aged care.
It also came out at the press conference that Victoria cancelled its non-urgent elective surgery to free up hospital staff to go into aged care because Morrison texted premier Daniel Andrews on Monday morning.
Morrison said the federal government announced the Victorian aged care response centre on Friday, but the workplace response was “rapidly escalated” over the weekend.
And he said that the widespread community transmission, and widespread transmission among staff, made the Victorian aged care outbreaks different to those seen in NSW at the start of the pandemic, at Newmarch and Dorothy Henderson Lodge.
This was a new situation, something that had not been anticipated or foreshadowed at a state level or considered at a federal level, that an entire staff of an entire facility where there had been a significant Covid outbreak would be completely removed. Effectively almost immediately. And so that placed an incredible strain on the continuity of care, getting staff to be drawn from not the usual sources at different levels of training. They were doing the best they possibly could under the circumstances but it is very distressing what those events lead to.
And so what we are seeing is that these circumstances that we are facing constantly change. And they presented new challenges will stop the challenges that we have in Victoria are very different to those that we experienced in Newmarch, the majority of the staff were able to be retained in the facility to ensure that there was continued continuity of care in those places. There was not broad-based community transmission that led to what occurred in Newmarch. In Victoria, there has been and that means that more facilities are at risk, and the fact that more facilities have not resulted in the circumstances we have seen in the small number of facilities in Victoria is welcome news, and encouraging news. That by large across the vast majority, the overwhelming majority of facilities, that those protections have proved sufficient to date.
Also before we go back to Canberra I wanted to let you know that the Victorian premier Daniel Andrews and health minister Jenny Mikakos will give the coronavirus update at 11.45am.
Back to NSW quickly, where premier Gladys Berejiklian is addressing the media and said she was given no prior notice of Queensland closing its border to greater Sydney, which the Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk announced via tweet a short time ago.
NSW Premier @GladysB has confirmed she received no prior notice of this announcement...@10NewsFirstSyd https://t.co/7PYbuWhREi
— Lachlan Kennedy (@lachlan_kennedy) July 29, 2020
The prime minister, Scott Morrison, was asked if the federal and Victorian government were playing a “blame game” over who was responsible for the Covid-19 crisis currently in aged care in Melbourne.
Morrison said:
I am not interested in any of that. What I’m interested in and what the premier [Daniel Andrews] is interested in is us working together to solve the problem. Reports of, I think these things about how the premier and I work together are greatly exaggerated. The premier and I enjoy a very good working relationship. We enjoy a high level of respect for each other and the responsibilities we each have. And we will continue to conduct those responsibilities as the public would expect us to do, and in fact as each of us would expect us to do.
However, Morrison obliquely mentioned Andrews’s comment that he would not put his mother in some of the private aged care facilities in Melbourne, saying decisions about placing a loved one in aged care was very difficult.
And it is an even harder decision these days because we know that, in many cases if not most, that we are making decisions about placing our elderly loved ones into pre-palliative care. And it is certainly the case of my own father last year. And they are difficult decisions because you’re coming to terms what you know is the situation. And so I understands the emotion that is around this issue. We saw this with minister [Greg] Hunt yesterday ... I think that is why we have to seek empathy in whatever we do.
Some of the heroics of the nurses and nurses aides, assistance of some of those working in the most affected facilities, are truly extraordinary.
Updated
Back to Canberra, Prof Brendan Murphy said the aged care facility of the biggest concern in Melbourne at the moment is Epping Gardens aged care in Epping, where the majority of the workforce had to go into quarantine and where the ADF moved in late last night.
There are still issues in that facility. Understand there are still concerns from families staff. We are in the process of decanting a substantial number of those residents, up to 45 out of that facility. We are putting in some very senior workforce to cope with the loss of the many senior staff in that facility who unfortunately had to quarantine. We are very confident we will have that facility stable like St Basil’s in the next 24 hours.
He said two-thirds of the residents at St Basil’s home for the aged in Fawkner are now in hospital, that’s 64 residents, with the remaining 32 being cared for in the home.
There is new management on site and all the reports are that this facility is now well-managed and care is good. and we have that independently verified from a number of sources. But there were clearly deficiencies in care last week and stories that we would have heard reported and which troubled all of us about that.
He also disputed claims aged care residents had been turned away from hospital.
On no occasion has there been a situation in Victoria where a dock or a clinical staff member feels that someone would benefit from hospital care when it has not been provided.
Updated
NSW records 19 new cases of coronavirus
NSW has recorded 19 new cases of coronavirus in the 24 hours to 8pm last night. Two of those cases are in hotel quarantine.
Updated
Queensland will close its borders to all of greater Sydney
Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk says no one from greater Sydney will be allowed into Queensland from 1am on Saturday.
BREAKING: Queensland will close its borders to all of Greater Sydney. From 1am Saturday, more hotspots will be declared and no one from Sydney will be allowed into Queensland. #COVID19au pic.twitter.com/044iZeTZ1g
— Annastacia Palaszczuk (@AnnastaciaMP) July 29, 2020
Murphy: Covid-19 cases in aged care 'essentially unavoidable'
Murphy said there are outbreaks in 77 of the 465 residential aged care facilities in Melbourne.
He says that given how widespread community transmission has been in Melbourne, “that, in some respects, shows just how well the others have done”.
It’s not the fault that those facilities have had outbreaks, that they have had cases introduced.
We know that people, residents and their families have often said that they have sometimes observed breaches and we will look into any issues in the retrospective analysis of the significant outbreaks. But these incursions oft his virus into facilities are essentially unavoidable.
Murphy said most of the 77 facilities only have “one or two small cases” and have been met with a “swift and prompt” public health response.
In others, they have been substantial and bigger outbreaks. We have 13 facilities that we are keeping a very close eye on at the moment. Many with more than 20 cases. We now have across all of aged care, including homecare, more than 400 residents who are now Covid positive. That is still a relatively small proportion of the cases in Victoria but it is probably the highest concern group of people that are infected with this virus.
There are also 381 once staff who have now contracted Covid virus ... On top of that, there are already many hospital and healthcare workers who have contracted the coronavirus and there are many hundreds of hospital staff in quarantine and isolation.
To date, 49 people in aged care in Victoria have died after testing positive to Covid-19.
Updated
Prof Brendan Murphy said the aged care sector could not protect against the virus coming into residential aged care facilities.
Aged care cannot be completely protected from sustained community transmission as we have seen in Victoria over recent weeks. Despite all the preparation, the infection control planning, the deployment of PPE, the pandemic and infection control plans that every facility has contract, created, the frictions of visitors, staff screenings, all of those cannot protect against what the prime minister said it was the inadvertent bringing into the facility of this virus.
Updated
Morrison says Australia is experiencing a 'Victorian wave' not a second wave
Morrison said the outbreak in Melbourne was impacting the Australian economy.
It is clear that the Victorian wave that Australians are now experiencing – that’s how I honestly have to describe it, there’s not a second wave that’s going across the rest of the country, that is not occurring. There is a significant Victorian wave, but that Victorian wave is impacting the national economy more broadly.
He said restaurant bookings and employment figures in other states were down due to the Victorian outbreak.
Morrison said he wanted to thank the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, for working together on the response. There’s been some sniping between the Victorian and federal government over whose fault this aged care crisis is (the answer is it’s both their fault).
He says:
I genuinely want to thank the Victorian government for working with us to get these solutions in place. These are our shared responsibilities, as the premier and I know. We have been in contact with each other this morning. We’ll be speaking later today. We have been in regular contact over these issues and I want to ensure Victorians in particular, but Australians all around the country, premiers, chief ministers, myself, our officials, our teams are working together to just focus on the problem, to solve the problem, and to keep Australians safe. That’s my sole objective.
Updated
Morrison said the first Ausmat team will arrive in Victoria tomorrow, and five teams would be stood up there “within a reasonable period of time”.
Ausmat teams have seven members, and are usually used in Australia’s humanitarian response to disasters overseas.
He also said that 150,000 aged care workers had now completed an online training module on infection control, through a refresher course issued by the new Victorian Aged Care Response Centre which was set up in Melbourne this weekend.
The aged care minister, Richard Colbeck, has been taking the lead on communicating with families, Morrison said.
Today, I’m advised that there will be outward calls to all of those family contacts in the Epping Gardens facility. That has already been done in relation to St Basil’s and that is the practice that has been put in place.
There is also a system that has been put in place where Services Australia is supporting the communication to families, working with the nurses and others in the facility who are providing those details to Services Australia so they can be communicated directly to families. It is our endeavour to contact families as often as possible to ensure they have the information of what is occurring with their loved ones.
Updated
Morrison:
I do stress – the principal cause for transmission into aged care facilities has been through workforce transmission. It is principally come through the infection of staff, more broadly in the community, many cases completely unaware of that infection and by the time they became aware of that infection, then obviously they’d been in those facilities.
And that is true in many workplaces around Victoria. In the case of aged care, then obviously the consequences of that and implications are far more serious to those whom they’re providing care.
Morrison said there had been the “immediate isolation of entire workforces in these places,” where there had been widespread infection among staff.
Now, if you take out an entire workforce in a facility, that is going to have obvious impacts for the continuity of care and very distressing consequences have flown from that. They trouble me deeply, I know they would trouble the premier equally deeply, our ministers for health, we are all very distressed by those events that took place in those few facilities that were affected in this way.
And so it has been important in those cases to move as quickly as we can to get workforces into those places. Those workforces have been drawn from broader nursing staff, but also, in particular, in the Epping Gardens centre, they were supported by the ADF.
Morrison thanked Victoria for suspending non-urgent elective surgery to free up hospital capacity for aged care residents to be moved to hospital, and for nurses to move in to aged care to supplement that workforce.
So I thank the premier also for his agreement to that step – working together to solve the problem.
Updated
Morrison said Australia was now experiencing the same issues as every other country that has had “sustained community transmission,” as there was now in Victoria.
Where there is sustained community transmission, it is inevitable that this will find its way into aged care facilities. When it rains, everyone gets wet.
And that is what we’re seeing with broad-based community transmission in Victoria. As the [Victorian premier Daniel Andrews] rightly said, if you are ill, do not go to work. That is true if you work in a meat processing plant, it is true if you work in a chemist shop, it is true if you work in a restaurant, it is true if you’re a journalist, a politician, whoever you may be, an aged care worker especially.
Morrison said Covid-19 had got into aged care facilities through workers, who were infected in the community, and the focus now was to protect against workplace transmission.
There are 430 aged care facilities in Melbourne, he said.
We have seen some very distressing and concerning situations arise in a handful of those facilities. In facilities such as St Basil’s, in facilities such as Epping Gardens where we have been working very consistently over recent days, in Kirkbrae.
There are a range of other facilities where there have been Covid cases – around 13 where we are keeping a very close watch on. There are facilities outside of that list of 13 who are obviously in areas where there is community outbreak which we are also watching, but they are in not what you’d call the critical list of facilities where we have a keen level of focus.
So it’s important to understand because I can understand if people in Victoria or even elsewhere as they’re seeing it unfold the very distressing stories out of St Basil’s and the other facilities which have been affected most acutely, that they will have concerns about the facility where their family is. The good news is – broadly across the aged care system in Victoria, we have been able, working together with the Victorian government – able to avoid those quite distressing scenes in the overwhelming majority of those facilities. But we will not be complacent about it.
Updated
Aged care outbreak in Victoria is 'very distressing', says Morrison
Morrison said the situation in aged care in Victoria was “very distressing”.
The situation that we have been facing, particularly in recent days and weeks in Victoria for aged care has been very distressing. It is very distressing first and foremost to the families of those who have loved ones in aged care facilities.
The most vulnerable in our community have always been our highest concern when it comes to managing the health issues associated with this pandemic. That has always been true for the elderly, but also been true for those who have many other co-morbidities, those who are undergoing chemotherapy treatments, those in Indigenous communities.
We have been always been aware of those who have been most vulnerable in our community and elderly persons, particularly those in facilities.
Morrison again drops that he called the royal commission into aged care, and says that “in many ways aged care in many instances, has become a form of pre-palliative care in Australia”. That means residents are even more vulnerable.
Many years ago it was quite different, but these days, particularly with the in-home aged care options, more Australians are choosing to remain at home. But those who have moved into aged care facilities are often moved in at a much more advanced stage and all of us who have had to make those decisions in relation to loved ones understood that and so I think that attaches to it a particular sensitivity in the challenges we’re now facing.
Updated
Prime minister Scott Morrison is speaking in Canberra about the aged care situation in Victoria.
He is alongside the former chief medical officer, Prof Brendan Murphy, who is now the secretary of the federal health department and therefore has oversight of aged care matters.
The Queensland chief health officer, Dr Jeanette Young, said the state has already closed its border to anyone from Victoria, and would not say if border restrictions would be tightened in response to this latest case.
Well, we already have closed our border to anyone who is from Victoria. You are required when you enter Queensland to go into quarantine. It doesn’t matter who you are, if you are a Queenslander or someone from any other state will stop if you have been in Victoria, you are required to quarantine in a hotel.
It’s the first time a Covid-19 case has been detected outside of quarantine in Queensland since May.
Young said Queensland still does not have community transmission.
We don’t have community transmission at this point. What I do advise people to do is get tested, that is the most important thing they can do for themselves and for the rest of the community. If they have got any symptoms at all or a fever, even a history of a fever, to immediately come forward and get tested and isolate themselves until they get the test result. If everyone in the southern part of Brisbane absolutely commits to do that today then we will all be a lot safer. That is far, far more effective than wearing masks.
Police to allege two women who returned to Brisbane from Melbourne provided false information on border declaration
Queensland’s deputy police commissioner, Steve Gollschewski, said police will allege that the two women provided false information on their border declaration pass to get back in to Queensland.
I can say to you that there is an investigation that is ongoing into the circumstances of these two young women coming back from Victoria into Queensland, including the way that they got through the border and the fact that they were in the community for eight days when they should have been quarantined.
He said the investigation was still ongoing but “the initial investigation is indicating that there were incorrect details on their declaration passes”.
Queensland police are working with authorities in other states to track the women’s movements.
Gollschewski said that more than 1.1m people have crossed the Queensland border and signed a border declaration pass since the border reopened and the system was put in place on 10 July.
What this highlights is why it is so important that everybody engages with that and does the right thing.
Updated
Aged care facilities in southern Brisbane closed to visitors
The Queensland chief health officer, Dr Jeanette Young, is angry.
It is very disappointing this has occurred. Two young women returned from Melbourne, which we know is an absolute hotspot with a lot of cases, return from Melbourne on the 21 July via Sydney and now tested positive.
As a result of that, a lot of people are going to be inconvenienced. And I do apologise to those people for what is now going to have to do occur. But we know that if we act really fast now we can stop this spreading further and cause even more inconvenience to a lot of people. So there are going to be shopping centres, a school, restaurants close now for at least 48 hours while we arrange a deep clean of those facilities and contact trace people who attended.
And also, I have asked that all the aged care facilities in the Metro South area be closed to visitors and have enhanced screening of staff, and that staff are not to work across multiple facilities. We need to act really, really fast.
These two young women have been out in the community for eight days while unwell. So please, anyone who lives in that Logan, Acacia Ridge, Springfield Lakes area, if you have any symptoms at all or if you are concerned, please come forward immediately and get tested ... If you are unwell, stay at home and isolate yourself.
Updated
Aged care facilities, shops and schools shut down in south-east Queensland after two women who allegedly broke border restrictions test positive to Covid-19
Queensland has recorded two new cases of Covid-19, the first new cases detected in the community in that state for many weeks.
The new cases are in women who returned to Queensland from Melbourne eight days ago, via Sydney. They did not self-isolate, despite requirements in place for everyone who was in Victoria in the past 14 days to self-isolate upon return to Queensland.
Health minister Steven Miles said:
They both travelled together recently, including returning to Brisbane from Melbourne on the 21 July via Sydney. They travelled on flights VA 863 and PA977. The Queensland Health contact tracers are identifying close contacts from those flights.
One of them works at Parklands Christian College and you will have seen that families were notified of the potential exposure last night. I understand an event that was planned last night was cancelled and now that the school is closed as a deep clean is going under way. Close contacts at the school are being identified. Testing capability will be set up at the school and be operational this afternoon. Rapid testing capability will now be deployed right through the region.
These young women have gone about their business within the communities that they live in and so there will be a large amount of contact tracing to be done, largely within the Logan and Springfield areas, including shopping malls, restaurants and a church.
Our contact tracers are doing that work right now. There is also a number of close contacts in both of their households. That will now be ordered to quarantine.
Miles said the most important message was for anyone with symptoms in the southern suburbs of Brisbane to get tested.
He said Queensland had responded to situations like this before, and would do everything needed to stop the spread of community transmission.
The whole of our system will be mobilised ... We have seen in other states that the most important thing, the most important thing in the period while we see if there is any other community transmission, is making sure that nobody in an aged care facility is exposed. This is clearly an evolving situation and we will do our best to provide you with information as we have it to hand.
But today, a lot of people will be interviewed by a public health staff and in some cases by police. And it is absolutely critical that everybody we speak to is fulsome and honest with our staff.
The impacts of breaking Covid rules and being dishonest and exposing people to be virus can be massive. We may have to, in addition to closing schools and locking down aged care facilities, we may need to close shopping centres and restaurants and churches. That’s the kind of impact that people can have here. So it is absolutely critical that every person we contact, every person we speak to provides us with the information we need and quarantines if they are requested to do so.
If there is anyone in any doubt as to whether they may have been exposed to this virus, they must go and get tested.
Updated
The bushfire royal commission will hold another four days of hearings from Monday, looking at “situational awareness, decision making and resource sharing at a national level”.
The royal commission was supposed to hand down its final report next month, in time for the start of the bushfire season which is rapidly approaching, but it has been extended for another two months and will now deliver the report in October.
We had fires from late August in Queensland last year, and quite serious fires in Queensland and northern NSW by October.
Yes, that’s right: we could have bushfires and a Covid-19 second wave lockdown at the same time. Get ready.
The president of the Australian Medical Association, Dr Tony Bartone, says “several hundred nurses” have been brought in to Victoria from interstate to bolster the staff numbers in residential aged care homes.
Bartone told the ABC that the AMA had been calling for a coordinated response to the outbreak, and was glad to see that all available resources were now being put into the aged care homes, three weeks after the outbreak began to gather steam.
There are now 763 active cases of Covid-19 in staff and residents across 80 aged care services in Melbourne. As we’ve mentioned before, that has caused a staffing crisis because hundreds of aged care workers are self-isolating as close contacts, and Victoria has paused all non-essential elective surgery to free up nursing staff to work in aged care.
Bartone said:
I know there are several hundred nurses coming in from interstate quarters. South Australia are sending some ... other parts of the commonwealth are mobilising additional numbers.
He added:
Clearly there is a difference between hospital nurses and aged care facility nurses in terms of the skillsets, but still if this particular time, it’s clinical care that’s really as much as the thing that’s going through the hole, so to speak. That’s what we need. We need people looking after the basic of human clinical care needs as an immediate response and that’s the function of the coordination between the federal government and the state government and that emergency response centres that are coordinating the response.
But he said he had some concerns about how well the response was being coordinated, saying it is an “enormous implementation when you’re actually replacing at very short notice, even less than an hour an entire cohort of a facility staff with another outside set of staff”.
Regardless of the capability and how exceptionally trained they are, they don’t know the residents. The residents don’t have a name tag. They need to identify who’s who, look at their charts, rapidly acquaint themselves with their relevant history and details and clinical care needs and then coordinate that. They’re not aware of what is where in the facility because they have just come in cold. So enormous, enormous emergency response challenges at a particular facility and unfortunately we’re seeing that in a number of other facilities as we speak and so that’s the challenge.
The facility he’s talking about here is St Basil’s, where, as I mentioned earlier, the whole staff, including senior managers, had to self-isolate.
Updated
A bit of planning around the morning’s press conferences.
The prime minister, Scott Morrison, is expected to step up at 10.30am.
NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian will stand up with the director of health protection at NSW Health, Dr Jeremy McAnulty, at 11am.
We’re standing by to hear from the Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, about the new case recorded in that state overnight.
And we still have not got a time for the Victorian coronavirus press conference today.
Dreamworld’s parent company, Ardent Leisure, will plead guilty to workplace safety charges over the fatal 2016 Thunder River Rapids ride tragedy, which killed four people.
More from AAP:
Ardent Leisure has been charged under the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 for allegedly failing to comply with its health and safety duty and exposing individuals to a risk of serious injury or death.
However, Dreamworld executives responsible for the park’s safety escaped individual prosecution after four tourists died on October 25, 2016, when they were thrown into the mechanism of the Thunder River Rapids ride.
The charges were brought before Southport Magistrates Court on Wednesday by Queensland’s Workplace Health and Safety prosecutor, Aaron Guilfoyle.
Guilfoyle alleges Ardent Leisure failed to provide and maintain safe plant and structures and systems of work at the iconic Gold Coast theme park.
The company also allegedly failed to provide information, training, instruction or supervision necessary to protect people from risk.
Each charge carries a maximum penalty of $1.5 million.
Barrister Bruce Hodgkinson, who appeared for Ardent Leisure, said the company would plead guilty to all three charges.
The matter has been set down for a lengthy hearing on September 28.
Cindy Low, Kate Goodchild, her brother Luke Dorsett and his partner Roozi Araghi were killed when a water pump on the famous ride malfunctioned, causing water levels to fall dangerously low.
Their raft collided with another after becoming stuck in the low water.
The Committee for Sydney says Sydneysiders should be required to wear a face mask to prevent a second wave infection taking hold, which would return the city to lockdown.
CEO Gabriel Metcalf said mandatory rules around wearing masks in certain high-risk areas in Sydney is the best hope to avoid more “draconian options”.
Sydney is seeing a slow increase in community transmission of Covid. The maths behind doubling rates mean that numbers can start out low and then quickly grow. Because most of the carriers are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic there is almost certainly community transmission that is not being picked up by tests. The fear is that we could be seeing the start of a true ‘second wave’ like Melbourne has seen.
It should be noted that the Committee for Sydney is basically a development, planning and events advocacy group, without any medical expertise.
Metcalf said without making the wearing of masks mandatory, it’s unlikely Sydney would get to the threshold of 80% of people wearing masks, which he says is the level of compliance necessary to make face masks effective against general community transmission.
It would be devastating to have Sydney go back into lockdown. In order to avoid that, one tool is to require face coverings. As a first step we propose that they be required on public transport, on airplanes, in hospitals, churches, shops and at funerals.
Throughout the pandemic we have repeatedly heard the phrase ‘there are no easy choices’. This is one of those times. Getting people to wear masks isn’t the only solution, but it could play a pivotal role in driving down infections and getting NSW back to normality sooner and faster.
Updated
A number of residents in Melbourne’s Epping Gardens aged care facility, which is linked to 82 active coronavirus cases among residents and staff, were transferred to hospital yesterday, and army medics came in to cover staff who are self-isolating.
Finally, Coatsworth was asked if he though it likely that Queensland would close its borders again, after it recorded its first case of Covid-19 in the community for several weeks.
Well, I think what we have seen is that we need to restrict movement across the country when there’s large amounts of Covid-19 in certain parts of it. So the premiers and their chief health officers are looking at this closely, quite clearly. South Australia have enhanced their border requirements and I’m sure premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and the chief health officer are looking at this in detail at the moment.
Updated
Coatsworth said that “as of today, everything possible is being done” to support residents and workers in aged care in Victoria.
It is about getting the situation to a point where there are not new outbreaks occurring. Now, the numbers of cases in some facilities is substantial and that is going to take some time to get on top of, but we have seen that there is an AUSMAT team going down there of clinical leaders to help with that leadership gap that we have got.
He said some workers that have been in self-isolation, including those at St Basil’s, will come out of isolation shortly and be able to get back to work.
Host Lisa Millar asked Coatsworth if Australia should expect to see similar rates of death from Covid-19 in aged care facilities as has been recorded overseas, which is as high as one-in-five.
It is tragically a disease that affects our elderly so severely. Our mortality, our death rates have been somewhat less than the international average, but that is not going to be of too much comfort to someone who has an elderly affected relative.
So the key here is for us to get these outbreaks under control as quickly as possible and that means across Victoria, in the residential aged care sector, but also needs control in the community as well. So once those two things happen, we’ll see the curve start to bend, to flatten again, and that’s when we’ll be able to get control. Before then, it’s important that we stop further outbreaks within residential aged care facilities and that’s the role of the Victorian Aged Care Response Centre.
The deputy national chief medical officer, Dr Nick Coatsworth, is speaking to ABC News Breakfast about the management of the Covid-19 outbreak in residential aged care in Victoria.
He said:
Well, my father was in aged care, I can’t imagine what some of the families down there are going through at the moment.
This is the highest priority for both governments.
Coatsworth said some of the senior managers of the affected aged care facilities have also been put into quarantine, which made the initial response a bit slower, but he said that “when we get some senior leadership to support those people on the ground, then we can actually get people cared for to the standard that those families and those residents deserve”.
So that has happened at some of the most affected facilities already and the aged care response centre is working through. It is a large task. It is an enormous task, but we’re getting some results there.
Coatsworth said the chief nursing and midwifery officer, Alison McMillan, had taken “personal charge” of the situation at St Basil’s Home for the Aged in Fawkner.
Updated
Staff member at Queensland school tests positive to Covid-19
A school in Queensland has been closed for cleaning after a staff member tested positive for Covid-19.
The woman who works at Parklands Christian College at Logan, south of Brisbane, tested positive late yesterday and returned to Queensland from interstate last week, the ABC reports.
Queensland Health told ABC:
The school will temporarily close until further notification to allow for cleaning and work will commence on contact tracing.
Queensland Health is working to determine where the virus may have been acquired, including working with the woman to gather necessary information about places she may have visited whilst infectious.
It’s the first positive case in the community in Queensland for some weeks.
NSW Liberal senator Hollie Hughes says she has been told to monitor herself for symptoms of Covid-19 after dining at the Thai Rock restaurant in Potts Point last week.
Hughes shared a letter she received from NSW Health, which said she was classified as a casual contact because she had been at the restaurant for less than two hours. If she had been there for more than two hours, she would have been considered a close contact and told to self-isolate and get tested, regardless of symptoms.
Here’s the advice I received from NSW Health after attending the Thai Rock restaurant. pic.twitter.com/nCYqbikFAa
— Senator Hollie Hughes (@hollieahughes) July 28, 2020
Updated
US praises Morrison for 'standing up for democratic values and the rule of law' against China
Australia signed a 10-year agreement with the United States on defence cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region and agreed to the potential expansion of the US Marine program in Darwin, at the Ausmin meeting in Washington DC overnight.
More on this from AAP:
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has praised Australia for standing up to China despite “coercive pressure from the Chinese Communist Party to bow to Beijing’s wishes”.
Pompeo and US Defense Secretary Mark Esper met with Australian foreign minister Marise Payne and defence minister Linda Reynolds in Washington DC on Tuesday for the annual Australia-United States Ministerial (Ausmin) Consultations.
The US and Australia committed to pursue increased and regular “maritime cooperation” in the South China Sea and deepen defence science technology cooperation on hypersonic, electronic warfare and space-based capabilities.
“We started this morning by talking at length about the Chinese Communist Party’s malign activity in the Indo-Pacific region, and indeed all around the world,” Pompeo said at a press conference. “The United States commends the Morrison government for standing up for democratic values and the rule of law despite intense, continued coercive pressure from the Chinese Communist Party to bow to Beijing’s wishes.
“It is unacceptable for Beijing to use exports, or student fees as a cudgel against Australia. We stand with our Australian friends.”
The US and Australian delegations agreed to the potential expansion of US Marine rotational force joint training exercises in Darwin to include additional partners and allies.
The US and Australia also intend to strengthen supply chains by establishing a US-funded commercially operated strategic military fuel reserve in Darwin.
Payne said Australia has no intention of injuring its relationship with China.
“We are very different countries, we are very different systems, and it’s the points on which we disagree that we should be able to articulate in a mature and sensible way,” she said.
Reynolds and Esper signed a statement of principles on defence cooperation and force posture priorities in the Indo-Pacific to drive Australian-US shared interests for the next decade.
“This includes hypersonics, electronic warfare and space-based capabilities,” Reynolds said.
Reynolds confirmed freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea was discussed and Australia’s “long history of transiting through the region” will continue. “Our approach remains consistent,” she said.
Esper did not specifically answer when a journalist asked if the US and Australia discussed deploying additional US troops or intermediate range missiles on Australian soil.
“We had a very wide ranging discussion about the capabilities that the United States possesses and the capabilities Australia possesses, and our desire to advance them whether they are hypersonics or any other type of capability,” he said.
“And I think it’s important as we think forward about how do we deter bad behaviour in the Indo-Pacific and how we defend the international rules based order, in this case specifically with regard to China.”
The Australian ministers will undergo 14 days of quarantine upon their return home.
Chief nursing officer had 'some considerable concerns' about aged care conditions
The Australian chief nursing and midwifery officer, Alison McMillan, is leading the aged care response in Victoria. She spent some time in St Basil’s home for the aged in Fawkner managing the response there last week, and acknowledged there were “some occasions where care wasn’t as good as we would want to see”.
McMillian told Radio National she had put a “very, very senior nurse into there to guide the staff there and care for the remaining patients” who are still in St Basil’s and have not been moved to hospital.
There are some residents remaining, they have all been assessed by both a geriatrician and an emergency service doctor to ensure that they are safe and they are in the best place
She said that aged care home underwent a particular crisis last week because all of its staff had to self-quarantine as close contacts, meaning a whole new team had to be brought in.
We had to go into a facility that really we didn’t know anything about, the computer systems ... everything, it was an enormous mountain to climb in a very short period of time.
McMillan said she had “some considerable concerns” about the conditions in St Basil’s, which have been criticised by the family members of residents, who say their loved ones were not being fed or changed last week and that staff were leaving PPE in the rooms of Covid-19 positive patients. She said:
I acknowledge and it’s been reported to me that there were some occasions where care wasn’t as good as we would want to see.
She said they had set up a “buddy system” so aged care workers monitored each other’s compliance to wearing PPE. But she added that wearing full PPE all day was complicated and uncomfortable, and not something aged care staff – or even most medical staff – were used to.
McMillan said she did not agree that St Basil’s or other homes were not fit places for older people to be.
This is a really really complicated thing to address. This is someone’s home, they have staff on board but when they are faced with managing and outbreak it is very difficult. we do swing in resources very quickly.
McMillan said she would not comment on the comment by the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, to say he would not want his mother in some of these places.
I think that we need to remember that there are many many people working very hard to keep many vulnerable people well and safe. I’ll leave those comments to the premier of Victoria, I am working very hard to keep these people safe and well in their home.
She said she was “eternally grateful for what I have seen so far” in hospital nurses and doctors offering to help work in aged care facilities.
Updated
Among those who are self-isolating in connection to the Potts Point coronavirus cluster in Sydney is one of prime minister Scott Morrison’s senior advisors, Nico Louw.
In a deleted instagram post, he said he attended the Apollo Greek restaurant on 25 July.
The PMO confirmed:
A staff member in the PMO is self-isolating after NSW Health issued a new alert last night.
The acting chief medical officer advises that because the staff member has no Covid-19 symptoms, the prime minister is clear to continue with his plans.
More details here:
For more information on the aged care crisis in Victoria, you can read this explainer by Melbourne bureau chief Melissa Davey.
Good morning,
Nurses from public and private hospitals and medics from the Australian defence force are moving in to private aged care homes across Melbourne to cover for staff who have tested positive for Covid-19 or are isolating as close contacts, with 769 active cases in the aged care sector and four more aged care residents dying yesterday.
The worst-hit homes, like St Basil’s home for the aged in Fawkner, have had all residents moved to hospital, and Victoria has cancelled all non-scheduled, non-urgent elective surgery to free up hospital capacity. The Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, said yesterday:
I cannot stand here and tell you that I have confidence that staff and management across a number of private sector aged care facilities are able to provide the care that is appropriate to keep their residents safe.
He also said he “would not let my mum be in some of these places,” causing a rift with the federal health minister, Greg Hunt, who said his own father had received excellent care at a private aged care home.
The idea that our carers, that our nurses are not providing that care, I think, is a dangerous statement to make. They are wonderful human beings and I will not hear a word against them.
The federal government is sending in an Ausmat team – specialist medics that usually manage Australia’s humanitarian response to overseas disasters – and has also put out a call for other states to supply nurses.
The Fair Work decision requiring aged care providers to provide paid pandemic leave to casual aged care workers comes into effect from today.
Meanwhile, pop-up testing clinics have been set up in inner-city suburbs of Sydney after three more cases were linked to the Potts Point cluster. Two of the new cases dined at both the Thai Rock restaurant and the Apollo in Potts Point, and the third case is a staff member of the Apollo.
Pop-up clinics have been set up in Surry Hills and Rushcutters Bay Park.
Let’s crack on. You can follow me on twitter @callapilla and email me at calla.wahlquist@theguardian.com.
Updated
