Health News at Your Fingertips

Dan Tehan, the minister for trade, tourism and investment, is speaking to the ABC. He is glad the WA lockdown has worked, but reiterates that such measures should be the last option taken.

Well, obviously the most important thing is that it has dealt with the outbreak. What I’ve said is that the best thing is if we can use our contact tracing and testing as a first resort and use lockdowns as a last resort, that’s the best way to give certainty to our aviation industry and our domestic tourism industry…but obviously these lockdowns need to be used as a last resort if it’s deemed necessary by the medical experts.

Bit of an update on this very odd story about missing Victorian campers. Police are going back to the area where they first disappeared.

More from AAP:

The year-long search for Victorian campers Russell Hill and Carol Clay is returning to the area where they disappeared.

Victoria police said they would go back to the Wonnangatta area on Monday “as a result of information obtained from previous searches”.

Two shovels were found during a search of the Mt Hotham area on 14 April, about 100km from Wonnangatta, and police said they were still being examined.

The search will focus on the area along the Dargo High Plains Rd, Cynthia Range track, Herne Spur track and the Wonnangatta track.

Hill, 74, and Clay, 73, went missing from the Wonnangatta Valley in March last year. Police believe Hill left his Drouin home on 19 March and picked up Clay from her home in Pakenham in his white Toyota Landcruiser.

Hill was last heard from on 20 March via HF radio, stating he was at Wonnangatta Valley. Campers found his car with signs of minor fire damage at the duo’s campsite near Dry River Creek track in the Wonnangatta Valley the next day. Their campsite had been destroyed by fire.

A number of searches have been conducted in and around the Wonnangatta Valley during the past 12 months, including on 4 April this year with cadaver dogs. Police conceded at the time it was unlikely Hill and Clay were still alive.

They continue to investigate whether the pair met foul play.

Detectives continue to appeal to anyone who was in the Wonnangatta area around the time of the campers’ disappearance to make contact.

They also want to speak to anyone who was in the Howitt Plains and Zeka Spur track area on 19-20 March 2020, and the Wonnangatta Valley and Wonnangatta Station area from 20-24 March.

Sydney is going to host the 2027 Netball World Cup. Reckon we will all be jabbed by then?

And the Mark McGowan hour has just finished in WA. One of the final questions, which unfortunately I didn’t hear, was met with this by the premier:

“Not Channel 7, that would be a Channel 7 question.”

On international arrivals – and WA has cut those numbers in half to a little more than 500 a week – McGowan would consider banning people from certain countries, depending on the state of their outbreaks.

I think there are countries … maybe Brazil, the other countries that have had big issues, we need to look at it. Half or perhaps even now more than half of the returning Covid-19 positive people are coming through or out of India and that is a big problem because that has caused the problem we face.

We need to judge these things on their merits based upon the Covid-19 status of the country in question, and at this point in time it is obviously India, and other points in time it may well be other countries.

There is a lot of back and forth at this McGowan press conference regarding hotel quarantine, federal government responsibilities, snap lockdowns, etc.

Given we’re now more than a year into the pandemic, and not much has changed when it comes to this sort of stuff, you can rest assured that:

• McGowan says quarantine is a federal government responsibility.
• He trusts his health department but the lockdown was necessary to make sure WA avoided what’s happening overseas.
• Hotels are not perfect for quarantine.
• He accepts responsibility for everything in Western Australia.

Got it? Got it.

It has not taken long for WA premier Mark McGowan to be asked at his media conference about the most important thing in the state: this weekend’s AFL derby between the Fremantle Dockers and West Coast Eagles.

It is scheduled for Sunday afternoon, the day after this first set of staged restrictions is set to end, and would usually have one of the biggest crowds of the year for any event in the state.

McGowan said:

[We] will make decisions based on public health advice later in the week … the game is on Sunday.

[Does it] follow that they can have a full crowd? No, it doesn’t. We’ll follow the health advice, based on how test results emerge over the next 48 to 72 hours.

We wait for that advice.

McGowan says from 12.01am tomorrow:

• People in Perth and Peel will be free to leave home but masks are mandatory.
• All schools will resume. All students and staff at secondary school will be required to wear a mask, but primary school students will not need to.
• There will be a 20-person limit in all homes and private indoor and outdoor gatherings.
• All public venues including hospitality, entertainment and retail can reopen, except for the casino and nightclubs and indoor fitness venues. The four-square-metre capacity rule will be in place, with a limit of 20 patrons not including staff.

The first stage of restrictions will be in place from 12.01am tomorrow until 12.01am Saturday, McGowan says.

We need to be cautious as we come out of lockdown as the virus could still be out there. That is why a stepped approach is safe in the best way forward. We can’t go back to where we were like last week just yet. This step-down approach will give us confidence to begin to get back to normal while we wait for further testing and the incubation period of the virus to come to an end.