COVID-19 latest updates from CME

Dennis McDougall — Wed, 03 Mar 2021 06:06:33 +0000

Last updated – 12.15 PM, Friday 12th February

WA Update

WA has recorded no new local cases of coronavirus for the 12th straight day, with 3,194 tests conducted yesterday. There have been nearly 95,000 tests conducted since the snap 5-day lockdown on Sunday, 31 January.

The Premier announced that from midnight on Saturday night, the transitional restrictions will come to an end and WA will revert back to where we were on the 30th of January.

Only a few restrictions will apply, like the standard capacity rules, restrictions on remote Aboriginal communities, mandatory contact registration and WA’s Controlled Interstate Border.

The wearing of masks will no longer be compulsory as of Sunday.

Recent changes made to contact registers and SafeWA will continue to apply.

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Border restrictions

At 6pm this evening, WA will impose a 72-hour hard border closure with Victoria. Companies will need to seek an exemption for any workers coming into the state. This will be reviewed over the weekend. Testing will be set up at the airport for incoming flights today.

Furthermore, at 12:01 Tuesday February 16, NSW will move from ‘low risk’ to ‘no risk’ and the border restrictions with WA will change accordingly.

Australian Update

Victoria is going into a 5 day lockdown

The Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has announced a five day lockdown to deal with a cluster stemming from an outbreak at the Holiday Inn quarantine hotel.

The “circuit breaker” action will begin from 11:59pm tonight until 11:59pm on Wednesday.

Victorian chief health officer Brett Sutton says without the circuit breaker lockdown the state could be up to 30 new cases a day by next week.

The lockdown was sparked by two new positive cases announced just before midnight on Thursday night.

Both were household contacts of previously confirmed cases linked to the Holiday Inn outbreak.

All 13 cases in the cluster are believed to be the highly contagious UK mutant strain.

The Melbourne Airport Holiday Inn quarantine hotel was evacuated on Wednesday. One was a worker at Brunetti cafe at Melbourne Airport terminal 4, which was added to the COVID-19 public exposure sites list after the employee worked a shift on Tuesday.

During the worker’s nine hour shift there were 29 flights that departed from or landed at terminal 4.

Anyone who was at the cafe from 4.45am to 1.15pm on February 9 needs to isolate immediately, get tested and remain quarantined for 14 days.

The case sparked concerns the virus could spread interstate.

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There will only be four reasons Victorians can leave home: essential supplies, care and caregiving and exercise and essential work.

Exercise and shopping will be limited to 5km from home.

Face masks will need to be worn indoors and outdoors and there will be no visitors to homes.

Schools will close, child care and early childhood centres will remain open. Higher education is closed.

Places of worship are closed. Religious gatherings and ceremonies are not permitted. Funerals can involve no more than 10 people. Weddings are not permitted unless on compassionate grounds.

Mr Andrews said:

“In the last 24 hours, there have been five cases of coronavirus notified to the Department of Health,” Mr Andrews said. “These include three cases that were announced yesterday afternoon. All are primary close contacts of confirmed Holiday Inn cases.

“There are now 19 active cases of coronavirus in Victoria. Some 24,209 test results were received today.

Victorians will be well familiar with the term “UK strain”, “UK variant of concern”.

We have talked about this for a long time, because it is so hyper-infectious, and moves so fast, that it is presenting a very, very real challenge to our status, our stay-safe, stay-open, our precious thing that we’ve built – all of us – throughout 2020.

The way in which they are presenting is a very significant concern to us. If I can just give you a couple of examples, I’ll make the point this way. We are having cases test positive – and we, in rapid time we get notified of that positive test result – by the time we find that case as positive, they’ve already infected their close contacts. Their family. People they live with, people they’ve spent time with.

That makes it incredibly difficult, incredibly difficult to do contact tracing, because there is no gap, if you like, between when we have the first case and their close contacts and potentially others that they have spent time with.

The whole process, because of the hyper-infectivity and the speed at which this moves, the whole process has been condensed down, and it is now, I am sad to have to report, it is the advice to me that we must assume that there are further cases in the community than we have positive results for, and that it is moving at a velocity that has not been seen anywhere in our country.”

Key updates

Terminal 4, Melbourne Airport has been added to our list of Tier 1 exposure sites. Anyone who visited this location on Tuesday 9th February between 04:45am – 2:00pm must isolate, test and remain isolated for 14 days.
Queensland has declared greater Melbourne a COVID hotspot. It will last for 14 days. People from the 36 local government areas in and around Melbourne aren’t allowed into Queensland from 1am tomorrow.
The Northern Territory Government has declared Greater Melbourne a coronavirus hotspot. Any travellers from the city arriving in the Territory from a quarter to 11 this morning will be directed into 14 days mandatory supervised quarantine.
No new local COVID-19 cases in ACT, Queensland and NSW.

International Update

US President Joe Biden has announced 200 million more doses of the coronavirus vaccine are on their way after revealing that by the end of August the country will have run out of coronavirus vaccine doses.

The new administration was “under the impression there was more vaccine available than there actually was”, Mr Biden said.

He said the US had signed a contract for 100 million more doses of the Pfizer vaccine and 100 million more of the Moderna vaccine.

With demand for the vaccine far outstripping supply, Americans are struggling to get appointments for their inoculations, leaving Mr Biden with an acute problem less than a month after taking over from his predecessor Donald Trump.

Key updates

Czech lawmakers on Thursday voted down a move by the populist minority government to extend a state of emergency aimed at stemming soaring coronavirus infections. The move came as neighbouring Germany said it would ban travel from Czech border regions as well as Austria’s Tyrol over a troubling surge in infections of more contagious coronavirus variants.
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, has defended her government’s decision to extend Germany’s lockdown into March by highlighting the “very real danger” of a third wave driven by Covid mutations.
New Zealand’s first Covid-19 vaccines will arrive in the country ahead of schedule in a win for the government, which has been criticised for being too slow to procure them. PM Jacinda Ardern said hundreds of thousands of vials of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine would be arriving early, and vaccinations for border staff would begin next Saturday.
Brazil reported 54,742 additional confirmed Covid cases in the past 24 hours, along with 1,351 deaths. That brings the total number of cases in the country to 9.7 million, and the death toll to 236,000. The Brazilian Amazon variant of the coronavirus disease may be “three times” as contagious as other strains, the country’s health minister has said.
The director general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, appears to have rejected comments made on Tuesday by the team of experts studying the origins of the Covid-19 virus after they said it was “extremely unlikely” that it leaked from a Wuhan virology laboratory and “isn’t a hypothesis we suggest implies further study”. Tedros said “I want to clarify that all hypotheses remain open and require further study”.
Portugal has extended a lockdown until 1 March or perhaps later to tackle its worst surge of Covid-19 infections since the pandemic began.
Ireland, which, according to the latest official figures, has recorded 3,794 Covid related deaths, is set to extend its lockdown until April.
The Philippines is poised to receive 600,000 doses this month of Sinovac Biotech’s vaccine donated by China, a portion of which will be used to inoculate military personnel.

COVID WA Helpline:
1800 020 080

For the latest official updates on COVID-19 please visit https://www.australia.gov.au/ and https://www.health.gov.au

For information on mental health support please visit https://www.lifeline.org.au/ or call 13 43 57

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