Health News at Your Fingertips

Tasmania has just released its daily Covid numbers, recording 1,129 new infections.

There are now 16 people in hospital with the virus.

NSW premier Dominic Perrottet has laid out his priorities to get the flood-ravaged Northern Rivers region of NSW back on its feet, including the urgent task of finding housing for displaced people, AAP reports.

“To me, the top priorities here are getting the clean-up done, getting people into homes and getting financial support out for those who need it,” he told the Nine Network on Friday. “We want people out of evacuation centres and into their own homes.”

The NSW government has announced a $551m housing support package for 25,000 households, jointly funded with the federal government.

However, coordinating housing for flood survivors was going to be a “significant challenge”, Perrottet warned.

The clean-up also poses a significant challenge with tonnes of debris and household waste remaining after the floods.

We have around 4,000 tonnes every day of debris being collected. It is a massive operation. It will take weeks and months.

Some $90m has been set aside for the clean-up across 28 local government areas.

Asked if he had urged the prime minister, Scott Morrison, to declare the Northern Rivers region a natural disaster zone sooner, the premier said it was “only relevant to coordination at a commonwealth level”.

In NSW, we set up our state emergency operation centre immediately.

The premier said the state emergency management centre is able to bring in all NSW government agencies with “that whole-of-government coordination”.

We don’t have a declaration in place because that coordination is in place.

A man has died after suffering critical burns in a suspicious house fire, allegedly involving petrol, that earlier claimed a woman’s life.

The 33-year-old man was transported to the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital after the fire near Logan early on Thursday morning and died shortly after 10pm.

A 31-year-old woman believed to be known to the man but not living at the home was also killed in the blaze, and an autopsy will confirm her identity.

Superintendent Mark White said on Thursday:

We believe the person who does not reside at that residence somehow gained entry and then once in there was able to throw petrol around.

Paramedics arrived at around 3am to find five people outside the home as firefighters tried to extinguish the blaze.

Ambulance operations supervisor Simon McInnes said in a statement on Thursday:

We have arrived to find that a house was pretty well engulfed in flames. Three children – aged two, three and five – were not injured.

Paramedics took a second woman, aged 30, to hospital with suspected airway burns.