Health News at Your Fingertips

The Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, was asked again about the lockdown of prisoners in Victoria, after it was revealed that a prison guard who works for security firm G4S at the Port Phillip prison had taken a second job working as a security guard in Melbourne’s bungled hotel quarantine program.

A spokeswoman for G4S told AAP:

In recent days, we have received information relating to an employee who, in early April, undertook secondary employment with a security firm without our knowledge. The staff member concluded this contract work in late April. The matter is now the subject of internal disciplinary processes.

No staff or prisoners at Port Philip prison have tested positive to Covid-19 to date, but a prison officer at the Ravenhall Correctional Centre tested positive on Tuesday, sending that prison and five others into lockdown.

Last night Corrections Victoria confirmed a prisoner who was in protective quarantine at the Melbourne remand centre had also tested positive.

Asked, again, if he would look at releasing lower level prisoners, or people held on remand, early as a result of the outbreak, Andrews said:

We are not making any changes in that regard as a result of the pandemic.

Mikakos also addressed reports that the hospital in Wangaratta, in north-east Victoria, was left short a significant number of healthcare workers yesterday because the new, tighter border restrictions mean that any healthcare worker based in NSW who travels beyond the border bubble has to quarantine for 14 days upon their return.

That means doctors who live in Albury, which is less than an hour’s drive from Wangaratta, will have to quarantine for two weeks to attend regular shifts or consulting days in the regional Victorian hospital.

Mikakos said 80 NSW-based healthcare workers were unable to attend work at Wangaratta hospital yesterday. She said she’s talking to the NSW health minister about it.

He has given me a commitment that he will look at his issue. It is really important that healthcare workers, that is people who work in hospital and paramedics and others, are able to provide those services.

For Victorians who are expecting to give birth while living under the stage three lockdown orders, the health minister, Jenny Mikakos, provided some detail earlier today:

From today the rules that apply to maternity situations is a woman is able to have her partner or a support person with her for as long as is required for the entire labour and birth … and then their partner or support person is able to be with them for a two-hour visit after the baby is born …

We are trying to strike a balance there between compassion and safety. We ask for Victorians’ understanding at this challenging time.

The Australian Capital Territory has again recorded no new cases of Covid-19, and now reports just one active case. That means two people have been declared recovered (or moved) since yesterday.

NSW has completed a record number of coronavirus tests in the past week, 153,195 compared to just 99,875 in the previous week.

There were 24,640 tests conducted yesterday, compared to 18,465 tests the previous day.

The highest number of tests completed in any one day over the past week was 27,000, which NSW Health said is “more than a 50% increase on the previous week”.

That’s about the same number being performed daily in Victoria, where the outbreak is obviously much more advanced.

Two schools and a childcare centre near Port Stephens on the NSW mid-north coast have been closed for deep cleaning and contact tracing, and a warning has been issued to people who visited a supermarket and a local cafe last week.

The schools have been caught in the tendrils of the coronavirus cluster around the Thai Rock restaurant in Sydney, which as of Thursday has grown to 46 cases.

A child who attended Tomaree public school and another, younger child who attends the Goodstart Early Learning childcare centre in Anna Bay both tested positive to Covid-19, in connection to the Thai Rock cluster.

They are reportedly connected to a 60-year-old man from the area who tested positive on Monday after attending the restaurant.

The Tomaree public school, Tomaree high school and Goodstart childcare centre were all closed today.

NSW Health issued a warning for anyone who attended the Woolworths at Salamander Bay on certain dates and times last week, and the Fingal Bay Café and Takeaway, to monitor themselves for symptoms and get tested if they develop.

The dates of concern for the supermarket are 17 July between 2.30pm and closing time, 18 July between 4pm and closing time, 19 July between 12.45pm and closing time, and 20 July between 3pm and closing time.

For the café, it’s 17 July between 11.30am and noon.

A drive-through testing site has been established at Tomaree Sports Complex at 20 Aquatic Close, Nelson Bay. It will operate this afternoon and then from 8am to 4pm for the next seven days.

The health minister, Greg Hunt, will provide the national coronavirus update at 1.15pm today alongside the chief nursing and midwifery officer, Alison McMillan.

Hunt will also presumably provide more detail about what’s happening with outbreaks in aged care, which is under federal purview.

Three people connected to aged care outbreaks were among the five Victorians who sadly died in the past 24 hours after testing positive to Covid-19, and aged-care residents have made up the majority of the 20 people with the virus who have died in the past week.

Guardian Australia political editor, Katharine Murphy, also asked for some clarification on one item in the economic update.

The line in question says that income support for individuals (including the coronavirus supplement) will cost the budget $5.9bn in 2019-2020, and $11.6bn in 2020-2021, before providing a positive boost to the budget of $834m in 2021-2022.

Murph asked Frydenberg to explain the assumption behind that cost swinging to a positive line item in 2021-2022. He did not, but his office later provided the answer:

Just wanted to set that out here, in case you were watching at home and slightly confused.

In Canberra, treasurer Josh Frydenberg says the government will pursue industrial relations reforms when parliament returns.

I can tell you the first cab off the rank will be labour market flexibility and a continuation of the industrial relations reforms that accompanied the jobkeeper introduction.

Our view is that those flexibilities that apply both to the employer and give them the ability to change duties, to change hours and to change the location of staff should be continued, not just for those firms that meet the reapplied eligibility test, but should apply to those firms who are on jobkeeper right now.

He said the almost 1m businesses that are on jobkeeper right now “should be able to maintain that IR flexibility going forward”.

This is a discussion that the attorney general will have with the relevant stakeholders, because what we do know is that businesses have relied on those flexible labour market reforms to operate in this challenging environment.

And it is reasonable that if you were previously working in sales in the showroom, but your shop has closed, that your employer can ask you to help in the warehouse with the stocking. Something as reasonable as that, particularly as you’re getting the $1,500 jobkeeper payment.

That’s just in the jobkeeper setting at the moment, but Frydenberg said they are “also looking to expand in these reforms”.

That is, he said:

… as part of those five working groups, and those five working groups cut across enterprise agreements, they look at obviously greenfield sites, casuals, compliance and award simplification.

Those are the areas where we have said that we’ll continue.

The spectre of the 2014 Australian federal budget never fades.

A reporter asks if the strategy introduced in that budget (“Matthias will remember this quite well”) to offset every new spend by reductions in spending elsewhere will be returned in this budget.

Frydenberg:

I’m sure both of us want to talk on that.

He says they will not be taking that approach.

… because clearly we’re in a very difficult and different time and so it requires a different approach.