Health News at Your Fingertips

Vicky Thompson, the chief executive of Group of Eight, the organisation representing Australia’s top universities, says that the 493 job cuts announced by the University of New South Wales yesterday are just the beginning.

Thompson told Radio National:

Now we are looking at the budgets for 2021 and it’s becoming a very stark reality for us, for all of our universities, that we can’t minimise job losses. So this isn’t the first, it won’t be the last.

She added:

Our situation has not been helped by the fact that we have not had access to jobkeeper and that would have at least backed our ability to reduce job losses.

Universities Australia has predicted that 21,000 jobs could be lost across the sector.

The Northern Territory will open its borders to all but Victorians and people from Sydney tomorrow, and the ABC is reporting that caravan parks on the South Australian- Northern Territory border have already begun to fill up with grey nomads eager to get into the state.

Everyone wishing to travel to the NT will have to fill out an online border entry form, 72 hours before they wish to enter. That includes a declaration of everywhere you have been in the past 30 days.

The penalty for lying on that arrivals card is up to three years in prison.

If you’re from Victoria or Sydney you can still enter the NT, but you will have to pay $2,500 to cover the cost of your mandatory 14-day quarantine.

Westacott was asked about the $2bn JobTrainer program. What does she think of it?

First of all this looks really good. I mean, I haven’t seen all the details,

What about Jobseeker (or Newstart) and Jobkeeper. Should they be continued, at coronavirus rates? Westacott said she welcomed the federal government’s announcement that Jobkeeper would be extended past the September cut-off in areas where it is needed.

On Jobseeker, she said:

Clearly we can’t go back to the Newstart allowance, we should not go back to it permanently, that’s a permanent change we should make.

Unsurprisingly, the chief executive of the Business Council of Australia, Jennifer Westacott, is also a fan of suppression — which allows for the community to open up while there is still some level fo the virus circulating — over elimination.

She told Radio National:

Well, I think we have to do everything we can to prevent [an outbreak] and, as the minister said, act on the health advice and protect vulnerable people… but I think we have to keep pursuing this suppression strategy.

Fran Kelly asked if it would not have been better, in the long run, to pursue an aggressive elimination strategy in the first place, like New Zealand did.

If you take that to its logical extreme, Fran, you would say you are not going to open the borders of this country up indefinitely until we find a vaccine.

Is that not already the plan, Kelly asks?

Well, how can we live with that?

Westacott adds:

We are in for a long haul here. The idea of a vaccine is a long way away…we have to I think get a risk management approach to this. Get better systems in place for quarantining, for testing, for tracing, for when an area needs to be locked down… because the alternative is I think serious economic consequences. And they may be numbers to some people but what are we talking about there? We are talking about people not being able to put food on the table, pay their bills, get through winter.

That doesn’t mean she disagrees with the Victorian lockdown, she says. Victoria has to do what it has to do to control the rapid community transmission.

Hazzard said NSW continued to support a suppression strategy, which is the official strategy in place in Australia, over an elimination strategy.

Everything we have done from the word go has been based on a suppression stregy. Elimination would be magic if you could achieve it but obviously we don’t have a vaccine.

Hazzard said NSW had increased its ICU capacity and tripled the number of ventilators it had since the pandemic began.

If the current strategy is followed and individuals take responsibility for social distancing, maintaining good hand hygiene, and never touching communal salt and pepper shakers, he says:

We will be able to live a new life in a normal way, a Covid way.

Hazzard said:

We are going to have to live with this virus for a long long time. And if we acknowledge that we also have to acknowledge that we have to keep our community as a community, with jobs.

He added:

Clearly it’s in everybody’s interests to be able to keep people in jobs, keep peoples’ mental health as well as they can .

He said that authorities had to strike a balance between maintaining the economy and the health response.

It’s a hard ask to strike a balance in a one in 100 year pandemic… We are considering and doing what we think is the balance.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian yesterday flagged there could be further restrictions, similar to those placed on pubs, which come into force at midnight. Asked what that could look like, Hazzard said that people managing cafes and restaurants should look at the restrictions imposed on pubs, and should also wipe their salt and pepper shakers.

He spoke about the salt and pepper shaker a lot. If you do not see someone at the cafe wipe them, he says, do not touch them. He said that managing the virus was the responsibility of all people, not just industry.

Here in NSW we got to a point where people suddenly thought ‘well that’s all over’. No, it’s mot all over. this virus is here until we have a vaccine. And particularly young people, I might say. Young people, we all remember — well I vaguely remember when I was young — and we all think we are immortal.

Hazzard also said people should stop “throwing stones” at Victoria, saying “there but for the grace of God go any state or territory”.

The NSW health minister, Brad Hazzard, has told Radio National that NSW does not see any need to return to lockdown, as the number of cases linked to the Crossroads Hotel cluster climbs to 34.

We are quite satisfied on the basis of the health advice we are getting, which has been very effective in the last five months so we have no reason to disregard that, is that steps that we have taken to date have been quite sufficient.

Hazzard said Victoria in a “much more challenging position” and said that“certainly from NSW point of view we are not in anything like that”.

At this stage there is absolutely no need to be considering what they are doing in Victoria.

The NSW chief health officer, Dr Kerry Chant, told reporters on Wednesday that the Crossroads outbreak had a particularly high viral load, which meant that people were becoming infectious one day after contracting it. Usually, that takes several days.

Asked by host Fran Kelly if that meant the outbreak could get out of control very quickly, Hazzard said Covid-19 could win a gold medal in the virus-spreading Olympics. Which, happily, is not a thing.

Acting Rural Fire Service commissioner Rob Rogers has been formally appointed to the position, replacing Shane Fitzsimmons as leader of the NSW fire agency.

Rogers began volunteering with the RFS in 1979 and has been acting in the role since April. He was a deputy commissioner during the horrific 2019-2020 fires.

NSW emergency services minister, David Elliott, said:

Rob is truly a veteran of the RFS. From his seat on the ‘Belrose Blitz’ (fire tanker) to the commissioner’s chair – the community has benefited from Rob’s leadership in action over successive fire seasons.

He added:

We’ve been working in lockstep with Rob Rogers and the RFS to ensure the state is as prepared as it can be to face disaster again this bushfire season.

The appointment was confirmed the day after Rogers and Fitzsimmons appeared before the bushfire royal commission.

The Queensland Council for Civil Liberties has called on the state government to release the draft of its bill to increase the maximum penalty for breaching public health orders to six months imprisonment.

The public health act already carries fines of $4,003 for breaching the chief health officer’s directions, which currently includes entering Queensland without a valid border declaration pass.

The QCLC says the draft should be released so it can be publicly debated before it is presented to the house.

Vice-president Terry Gorman wrote to the health minister on Wednesday requesting the government consult the Queensland Law Society or the Bar Association first, AAP reported.

He wrote:

The proposed further Covid-19 legislation containing prison terms of up to 6 months represents a significant increase in penalties and in that regard the proposed legislation should have been the subject of public consultation.

There has been no consultation with this Council and so far as I am aware no consultation with other stakeholders such as the Queensland Law Society or the Bar Association.

Good morning,

The federal government will unveil its $2bn job skills package, dubbed — can you guess? — JobTrainer. Yes, that naming convention is not done yet. It includes $1.5bn to expand an existing wage subsidy for apprentices and trainees and $500m, to be matched by the states, for free or low-cost training programs intended to help people to reskill.

We will also get the new labour force data out today. It’s expected to show an increase in unemployment.

In Victoria, the ABC has reported that a number of hospitals have moved to impose tighter restrictions on visitors, on top of the restrictions already imposed when Melbourne went back into stage three stay-at-home orders. It comes as a significant number of health workers, including six staff at the Royal Womens Hospital, have tested positive to Covid-19.

Doctors working in Melbourne hospitals say they are feeling the strain. Emergency departments are understaffed, and more patients with Covid-19, including some needing intensive care, are being wheeled in.

Meanwhile, Queensland will today move to pass new laws to strengthen its public health orders to include a maximum penalty of six months imprisonment. Health minister Steven Miles announced the move on Monday. It will bring Queensland in line with the penalties for breaching a public health order in NSW, but legal groups have told the government the change should not be introduced without public consultation.

Finally, 19 Queenslanders who visited the Crossroads Hotel in southwest Sydney have now tested negative to the coronavirus.

You can follow me on twitter @callapilla or email me at calla.wahlquist@theguardian.com

Let’s crack on.