Australia’s Test tour of South Africa is looking increasingly unlikely after the country recorded 1 million cases of Covid-19 as a new variant of the coronavirus emerged.
Australia are set for a three-Test tour in mid-February, but a number of hurdles must be cleared before it can be ticked off, reports AAP.
Cricket Australia is still working closely with its South African counterpart on a possible plan to cover logistical, safety and biosecurity concerns.
Issues that plagued the recently abandoned England tour, where local players and hotel staff were infected, would need to be addressed.
Publicly, CA is committed to doing all it can to have the tour go ahead while mindful of a strong duty of care to its players.
However, with the departure date six weeks away, the reality is that time is fast running out.
South Africa on Monday became the 18th country to register 1 million confirmed Covid cases, with daily numbers equivalent to the June peak.
Medical experts have also expressed fears over what they believe is a more contagious variant of the virus sweeping the country.
Interim Australian Cricketers Association boss Joe Connellan said he expected CA to take a cautious approach around the tour.
Cricket Australia do come from this from a very conservative position and you can see with the tightness of the current of protocols,” Connellan said.
Pat Cummins was on the record very recently saying that players are at a level of anxiousness around this.
And a reminder you can follow our live coverage of the second Test between Australia and India here.
Updated
at 1.04am EST
David Littleproud calls on states to fill fruit-picking labour shortages
Fresh produce will fall to the ground and rot unless state governments allow more workers to enter the country to fill fruit-picking labour shortages, the agriculture minister has said.
David Littleproud used an interview with the ABC today to call on the states to offer more flexibility, saying so far only 1,500 people had come to Australia out of the 22,000 workers from 10 Pacific nations who had been pre-vetted by the federal government.
That’s been predicated on the fact that the states haven’t allowed extra numbers to come in because they’ve maintained the quarantine caps in each of their jurisdictions.
Littleproud credited Queensland with being “a little novel in terms of how they’ve brought people in” and allowing them to quarantine on farms rather than in motel rooms. While he said he respected the states’ sovereignty, “we’re now saying to them, it’s time-critical”.
We’re at a the juncture, particularly for you in the southern states, in Victoria in particular, that unless something happens now, unless you find a mechanism for quarantining, then our farmers are going to have a lot of their crop to fall on the ground and rot, or they’ll simply plough it in … We are saying to [the states]: now’s the time to actually pull the trigger, otherwise you’re going to pay for it at the checkout.
That’s a reference to the fact that the federal government’s agricultural forecaster has predicted fruit and vegetable prices could rise in Australia due to Covid-19 travel restrictions limiting labour available for harvesting. We reported last month that prices of summer vegetables, stone fruit, apples, pears, and table grapes were forecast to rise by between 15% and 25%.
Littleproud also conceded that the government’s domestic fruit-picking relocation scheme wasn’t going to solve the labour shortages. Asked how many Australians had accessed the $6,000 incentive to date, he said:
Look, only in the hundreds, three or 400 at the moment. And we didn’t expect that to be the panacea, but all these jobs have to be market tested first. Australians get first [chance].
For more information on the issues in the fruit picking industry in Australia, see this recent feature by Elias Visontay:
Updated
at 12.17am EST
As I noted earlier, there is some wild weather on the way in NSW.
AAP has more details below.
Large chunks of greater Sydney and NSW’s central west are set for damaging winds and large hailstones as part of a severe thunderstorm.
The Bureau of Meteorology on Monday afternoon issued a severe thunderstorm warning for Sydney and parts of the Illawarra, Hunter and the Central Tablelands which could linger for most of the afternoon.
The bureau later extended the storm-prone area to NSW’s Central West Slopes and Plains, as well as parts of the Southern Tablelands.
The State Emergency Service advised that cars in affected areas should be moved away from trees and loose items should be secured. People should stay at least eight metres from fallen power lines.
A severe thunderstorm cell was on Monday afternoon also moving in a northeasterly direction from western Sydney to the NSW Central Coast.
A Bom meteorologist, Helen Reid, said earlier on Monday that storms had already been recorded across NSW’s north and east, with gusts reaching 80km/h.
Some rain-hit areas could receive up to 30mm of rain on Monday.
“We do have a beautiful summer situation where we have a lot of moisture feeding in from the tropics,” Reid said in a statement.
“The tropical convergence zone has moved into the southern hemisphere, bringing that moisture closer to us, and with an inland trough over NSW just directing that moisture over us, it’s going to hang around for a few days.”
Most of coastal NSW is also subject to a strong marine wind warning.
Reid said more thunderstorms would occur on Tuesday in north-east NSW, but a southerly change would ease conditions in NSW’s south and west.
Updated
at 11.32pm EST
Greg Norman returns to hospital for further Covid treatment
Greg Norman has returned to hospital for further Covid-19 treatment.
The Australian golfing great was admitted on Christmas Day but returned home to self-isolate on Saturday while he waited for the results of a test.
But he said in a new Instagram post:
I hope this will be my final update on this Covid saga … back in hospital after getting a positive result.
The path to full recovery. Hoping to be out later today.
According to Reuters, Norman said the “hideous” virus had “kicked the crap out of me like nothing I have ever experienced before”. That was despite Norman saying he had a high pain tolerance.
He said:
Muscle and joint pain on another level. Headaches that feel like a chisel going through your head scraping little bits off each time, fever, muscles that just did not want to work.
Then my taste failed, where beer tastes bad and wine the same … at times struggling with memory of names and things.
Updated
at 12.10am EST
