Health News at Your Fingertips

The Australian Capital Territory has made wearing face masks compulsory inside shops, hospitality venues, hairdressers and gyms, despite recording no new cases.

Scott Morrison has issued a statement on the Nationals cabinet reshuffle, welcoming the new changes under Barnaby Joyce’s leadership.

Morrison said:

The deputy prime minister the Hon Barnaby Joyce MP will continue our strong legacy of infrastructure investment as the minister for infrastructure, transport and regional development.

Senator the Hon Bridget McKenzie will return to the cabinet … She will have a clear focus on service delivery in regional Australia and be responsible for the continued work developing Australia’s disaster management capability.

These changes will provide the strongest female representation in an Australian government cabinet on record, building on the previous record also achieved under my government.

Morrison thanked former Nationals leader Michael McCormack for his “faithful commitment to a strong Coalition government”, and thanked Darren Chester, Keith Pitt and Mark Coulton, who were demoted in the reshuffle.

Three NSW residents who breached border restrictions and flew into Coober Pedy have been arrested, SA police commissioner Grant Stevens says.

They were refused entry to the Northern Territory. They came to Coober Pedy, a smaller airport. We were able to get on top of that.

Stevens says all three have been tested for Covid.

Spurrier says that modelling shows that, if the Delta variant entered South Australia, it would have a reproductive rate (R0 value) of 3.5.

The R0 value in the first wave was 2.5.

“That’s because we have very few restrictions in place but also we’re dealing with this Delta variant,” she says.

“Our community is a bit of a tinderbox. We’re very concerned if we get undetected cases it will take off very rapidly.”

Spurrier also refuses to pass comment on NSW, and whether the state should have locked down earlier.

“Vaccination is the best way of preventing the spread in our community,” Prof Spurrier says.

She says she is concerned for the APY lands given the potential spread in central Australia from a mine worker in the NT.

She says there were 3 new internationally acquired cases in SA yesterday.

South Australia’s chief health officer, Prof Nicola Spurrier, said about 2,000 people had entered the state from NSW between 21 and 23 June, before the border was closed.

Those people were SMSed yesterday and our team will be continuing to locate and contact them.

Those people have to isolate.

Marshall says restrictions in SA may be brought in tomorrow.

He says:

With the very low level of restrictions we have in South Australia, we need to look at those. We’ll be looking at those over the next 24 hours. There will be a further announcement tomorrow.

We are thinking of moving to a higher level of restrictions internally in South Australia for a one week period.

The South Australian premier, Steven Marshall, is speaking now.

He says:

There has been a significant deterioration of the situation in Australia, over the past 24, 48 hours.

South Australia needs to take decisive action to make sure we can keep our state safe.

Effective immediately, South Australia will be closing its borders to Queensland, Western Australia, the NT and the ACT.

The border to NSW was already closed.

Marshall says the SA-Victoria border will stay open, but everybody entering the state from anywhere in Victoria will need to be tested.

The border with Tasmania remains open.

Andrews also confirmed that he would be “on the ballot” and running at the next election in that video.

Victorian premier Daniel Andrews has released a long video detailing the sequence of events leading up to his injury this year where he broke multiple ribs and his T7 vertebrae.

His wife, Catherine Andrews, said the premier had turned blue when she found him, and they both thought he was going to die.

Daniel Andrews said:

We’d been down the beach having a family weekend. It was a bit of a chance to have some time together.

I was making my way to the car to head off to work. It had been raining … As I put my foot on the first step, I knew I was in trouble.

I didn’t really connect with the step, i just slid straight off. I became airborne almost .. and all I could hear was this almighty crunch.

When I heard the crunch I thought: ‘This is serious. We are in trouble here’ … It felt like an eternity, I couldn’t breathe.

Catherine Andrews said:

You were going blue. I was thinking ‘you are going to die’ … and you were looking at me and you felt the same.

The premier’s injury has attracted a fair number of conspiracy theories, and the Victorian opposition recently issued a long list of unanswered questions over what happened.

Andrews says in the video today:

We’ve seen some really vile stories being put around about what happened.