Police are investigating the harm suffered by Daniel Andrews’ voters overnight, as the New South Wales government took into account a warning about the southwest Sydney group.
Back in Sydney, Brad Hazzard said the state government “closely monitors” coronavirus figures and tests the figures to see when it could simply ease restrictions. He said the government sought to ease restrictions, but would balance that with the risks of fitness. .
He said it was hard to make that call with such low check numbers. NSW recorded 15,802 checks and points to 20,000 checks consistent with the day.
Hazzard said the most productive technique for:
Treat everyone as if they have Covid and this can be the smartest way for everyone right now.
I just looked for the right guy and my comments on the timing of Daniel Andrews’ press conference today. It takes place at 11:51 am because that’s when the West Gate Bridge collapsed 50 years ago today. Thirty-five more people died.
NSW’s fitness director, Dr. Kerry Chant, said public fitness officials had contacted a “large number of patients” at the Lakemba GP clinic to have a comprehensive policy of all possible contacts.
Chant asked if she was now “comfortable” with the shape of this specific epidemic, to allow New South Wales to move forward with the easing of restrictions.
My point of convenience will pass from top to bottom. I’m more worried, I’m less involved today. Array. . I’m not betting on Covid.
She said the three new cases today were household contacts of previously identified cases.
The two unidentified cases include a man in his 50s in south-western Sydney. She said it could take some time to trace back connections, adding it was “not a forensic science”.
We ask people to go back over their credit card records, we ask people to validate with their family what they have done … this is not a perfect science.
Chant said the reason she pushed back on releasing some information about people who tested positive to Covid-19 because that was “part of our pact with the public”. They agree to get tested and provide full and frank information about their movements, and public health officials ensure they are not identified at press conferences. It is not useful to have people “pilloried in public,” Chant said.
Hazzard has picked up the reports of the Melbourne truck driver who did not fully disclose his movements to contact tracers and spread the virus to Shepparton, which is within the NSW border bubble.
Public health officials need to be able to track the trains of transmission. That’s impossible if people do not tell us where they have been.
Hazzard said that because Shepparton was in the bubble, NSW had to be on “very high alert in that southern area”, including placing more alerts on aged care facilities and health facilities on the NSW side of that border bubble.
We are not interested in any of your personal activities, we are not interested in any legal activities you may have been involved in, public health just want you to tell the truth and nothing but the truth.
One of the other new cases is a household contact of a man in Bargo, who tested positive yesterday. The two remaining locally acquired cases remain under investigation.
NSW health minister Brad Hazzard is giving the coronavirus update in Sydney.
He says the state recorded six locally acquired cases in the past 24-hours, twinning with Victoria, and five in hotel quarantine.
Three of the locally acquired cases are connected to the Lakemba GP cluster.
Hazzard said the testing numbers were still too low.
We are aiming to have at least 20,000 a day and while we have these positive cases still amongst us … the emphasis that Dr Chant and I have is please get tested.
NSW chief health officer, Dr Kerry Chant, and the health minister, Brad Hazzard, will give the coronavirus update at 11am. So, quite shortly.
Victorian premier Daniel Andrews will give a press conference alongside transport minister Jacinta Allan at 11.51am, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the West Gate bridge disaster.
On Shepparton, my colleague Matilda Boseley is keen to speak to people in the town who are specifically impacted by the potential outbreak.
That could include people who are lining up to get a test; people who have to self-isolate for 14 days because they were at one of the high-risk locations; and people with health issues or other vulnerabilities that makes them particularly at risk from Covid-19.
You can reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter at @MatildaBoseley
There are long queues for Covid-19 testing in Shepparton again this morning.
The town is clearly taking the outbreak very seriously, which is good news.
Daryl Maguire is back before Icac this morning and my colleague Michael McGowan is live blogging his evidence.
He is being asked about a “drop in” meeting between Maguire’s Sydney property developer friend, Joe Alha, and the premier Gladys Berejiklian.
Morrison is repeating the federal government’s definition of a coronavirus hot spot, which was set by the chief medical officer and is an average of 10 new cases per day over three days.
Queensland has said it will not open its border to any jurisdiction that has had any locally acquired case in the past 28 days.
He is making an argument that domestic tourism can be even more important to tourism providers than international tourists. Radio host John MacKenzie says that domestic tourists don’t do the experiences – they just book accomodation, no raft rides. Morrison says that in the next few years, Australians wanting to travel and have those adventure tourism experiences will not be travelling to Mexico or Thailand, they will be up in north Queensland.
Prime minister Scott Morrison is still in Queensland, and he is doing a bit of a tour of local radio. He just spoke to John MacKenzie from 4CA Cairns and is lobbying for the Queensland government to open its domestic borders.
It’s all about tourism, Morrison said. He said that Queensland could have international tourists from New Zealand as early as Friday, when the first plane in the new trans-Tasman bubble arrives, but for its requirement for two-weeks quarantine.
He said those visitors would be coming in and visiting New South Wales and the ACT, but not Queensland.
We are opening up to New Zealand visitors to Australia and that is the only thing that stands in the way. And as you know New Zealand has a very good Covid record.
He added:
We have got to plan with or without the vaccine so we have got to be looking at ways for people to come to Australia anyway, safely.
Morrison said that could include extending the bubble to other countries deemed safe, and said the government was in “very early conversations” with Japan, Singapore and South Korea.
But he said the domestic tourism market could also help operators in Queensland recover, if they were able to travel without quarantine.
The big part of it, John, is domestic tourism … about 70-80% of our tourism is domestic …
The domestic tourism industry can have an enormous help for Queensland. Domestic borders should only be there for health reasons and only so long as it is absolutely necessary.
As always, you can follow our rolling global coverage of the coronavirus crisis here.
BHP held its annual general meeting at 5pm last night, a convenient time, and senior business reporter Ben Butler listened in.
He reports that the mining company batted away shareholder criticism of its intention to continue investing in gas, and also addressed the fallout from rival Rio Tinto’s decision to blow up a 46,000-year-old Aboriginal heritage site at Juukan Gorge in the Pilbara.
Chairman Ken MacKenzie said the latter incident had resulted in a loss of trust in the mining industry, but BHP would push ahead with its proposed South Flank project, over which, Guardian Australia has reported, the Banjima people have significant concerns.
Read the full report here:
Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe has told an investment conference that further monetary policy easing would get more traction now that the Australian economy was starting to open up.
Via AAP:
Addressing the annual Citi Australian and New Zealand investment conference, Lowe said the board has been considering what more it could do to support jobs, incomes and businesses in Australia to help build the road to economic recovery.
“When the pandemic was at its worst and there were severe restrictions on activity we judged that there was little to be gained from further monetary easing,” Lowe said.
“As the economy opens up, though, it is reasonable to expect that further monetary easing would get more traction than was the case earlier.”
He said the board will continue to review these and other issues at its upcoming meetings.
There has been speculation the central bank is about to cut the cash rate to 0.10% from 0.25%, while making similar adjustments to its three-year bond yield target and its term funding facility rate for banks.
The board meets again on November 3.
A reminder that the accidental release of government talking points is not a disaster but actually an exercise in efficiency.
Police in Victoria have issued 70 fines for alleged breaches of public health rules in Victoria in the past 24-hours, including 18 fines for failing to wear a face covering.
Among those fined included a group of six people on a bus at Carnegie Railway Station, who all had different home addressed and allegedly said they had been visiting other friends.
A man was also fined for allegedly travelling by train to Geelong from Southern Cross Station to buy a backpack. Police say the man said he travelled to Geelong to buy a backpack because all the shops in the city are shut.
Melbourne bureau chief Melissa Davey has spoken to epidemiologist Hassan Vally about what it was like working in Victoria’s aged care response centre. Valley is based at Monash University, but was called in to help the public health response and began working from the aged care response centre in August.
He said:
It’s really hard to convey the stress and anxiety inside the centre in those first few weeks.
The biggest challenge for the team that I was involved in, in those early days, was getting timely and accurate data that was specific to what was happening in aged care centres so that decisions could be made on a daily basis as to where our resources and effort should be directed to. It was a very difficult task because of the complexities of the aged care sector where you’ve got the commonwealth government involved in various aspects of it, as well as the state. You’ve got data that was going to the commonwealth, and then also data from the state government, all collected on different timelines from different sources and this creates confusion.
We needed to get what we called ‘a single point of truth’, essentially making sure that we had one set of data that everyone agreed on.
Read the full interview here:
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