Australia: Nearly all Victoria cases may have link to hotel quarantine
In Australia, government decision makers, departments, hotel operators and private security operators are on notice they will be expected to give evidence to the Victorian inquiry into the coronavirus hotel quarantine management, as the inquiry hears nearly all current cases in Victoria could be linked to hotel outbreaks.
The inquiry was launched by the state government after it was revealed that protocol breaches by security guards overseeing hotel quarantine had led to outbreaks in Victoria.
The inquiry heard on Monday that there is evidence that many if not all of the current cases of coronavirus could be linked to the hotel outbreaks.
“Information already available to the inquiry suggests the possibility of a link between many of the cases of coronavirus identified in the Victorian community in the past few weeks, and persons who were quarantined under the hotel quarantine program,” Neal said.
“Comments made by the chief health officer to the media have suggested that it might even be that every case of Covid-19 in Victoria in recent weeks, could be sourced to the hotel quarantine program.”
First coronavirus-linked death in Melanesia as Papua New Guinea outbreak spreads
Papua New Guinea has recorded its first Covid-19-related death – the first Pacific island fatality outside US territories and the first in Melanesia – as it seeks to contain an outbreak in the main hospital in its capital, Port Moresby.
The 48-year-old woman – who had stage four breast cancer – died in Port Moresby general hospital on Sunday. She died with the novel coronavirus, doctors said, and her illness and death “may have been complicated by Covid-19”.
Before the woman’s infection and death, all five confirmed cases in PNG in the past week were among workers at the central public health laboratory, where Covid-19 tests are being conducted, at Port Moresby general hospital. A cluster in the hospital has raised questions about the country’s capacity to safely test and treat cases in an outbreak.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un berated construction managers for unspecified problems in building a showpiece hospital in comments reported Monday that may indicate the country is struggling to secure the supplies amid US-led sanctions and a coronavirus lockdown, AP reports.
During a visit to the construction site in Pyongyang, Kim lamented that his ambitious project of building a new general hospital was being carried out in a careless manner and without a proper budget and ordered all officials responsible to be replaced, the Norths official Korean Central News Agency said.
In announcing the plans to build the hospital in March, Kim made a rare acknowledgement that his country lacks modern medical facilities and called for urgent improvements in the country’s health care system.
However, the country hasn’t directly linked the hospital project to the coronavirus pandemic and has steadfastly maintained that no one in its territory has been sickened by Covid-19, a claim many foreign experts doubt.
Experts say the pandemic has hurt the North’s economy, already battered by stringent US-led sanctions over its nuclear weapons and missile programs.
Experts say the Covid-19 crisis likely thwarted some of Kims major economic goals by forcing the country into a lockdown that shut the border with China, its major ally and economic lifeline, and potentially hampered his ability to mobilise people for labor.
El Salvador to postpone second reopening phase
Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said on Sunday that he would postpone the second phase of the country’s economic reopening, slated to begin Tuesday, after evaluating inputs from experts and the Salvadoran health ministry, Reuters reports.
Just on Saturday, the president had reiterated his intention to move forward with the next stage of restarting the economy.
“After listening to the opinions of experts and above all, the Ministry of Health … I have decided to suspend Phase 2 of the economic reopening,” Bukele wrote in a post on Twitter.
Bukele and El Salvador’s congress have clashed over how to manage the pandemic. Lawmakers have so far refused to approve a request from Bukele’s government for new emergency measures to restrict the movement of people.
El Salvador has registered a total of 11,846 coronavirus cases and 335 deaths.
