Health News at Your Fingertips

OK, so vaccinated NSW residents can take a leisurely stroll to anywhere in Victoria provided they get a test, but Melburnians can’t travel more than 15km from home (or visit someone’s household), regardless of their vaccination status.

And Sydneysiders can travel to the US, but not Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, Tasmania, the NT or Canberra without facing tough quarantine restrictions or complete bans. It’s not that hard to understand.

Tourism and Transport Forum chief executive Margy Osmond is speaking with the media on premier Dominic Perrottet’s surprising resumption of quarantine-free international travel for vaccinated arrivals from 1 November.

She says the industry will “need a little bit of time” to get geared up (won’t we all) but 1 November works for her.

She says the suspension of 14 days quarantine is “critical” to attract travellers to Australia:

Nobody coming to Australia for other business or a holiday or study is actively going to quarantine when they get there. It is not going to happen.

In the first instance this really is about visiting friends and family and reconnecting with the ones you love. Secondly, it is going to be very much about university students, it’s going to be about bills we need to get the industry up and running, and not just ours, the whole range of others. And then it will be a bit more about the leisure and tourist and hopefully by that stage other states will have seen the light and we will have opened borders throughout the country.

Queensland will move to reassess the NSW border restrictions after the southern state announced it would scrap mandatory quarantine for vaccinated international travellers, AAP reports.

Queensland chief health officer Jeannette Young says the border settings will have to be reassessed if NSW allows quarantine-free international travel from November, but she doesn’t have enough information about the plan yet.

There’s just been an enormous change this morning that I haven’t been able to get my head around.

So I need to go and work out what that change means, and it’s not just a change that will impact on NSW, opening the borders to NSW then leads to a flow on to every other state.

So, I just have to recalibrate my thinking that I’ve been coming to over the last few weeks.

The chief health officer could not say whether the border travel restrictions would be tightened.

Let me see it please, let me go through it all, I’ve seen so far is a very brief text message. I need to have a bit more information than that, to work out what should be done.

Health minister Yvette D’Ath said the NSW announcement made it even more critical for unvaccinated Queenslanders to go and get the jab.

As of Wednesday, 71.4 per cent of eligible residents had received one dose of a vaccine and 54.8 per cent were fully vaccinated.

The announcement today by NSW makes it even more critical. If you get your vaccination today it is going to be five to six weeks before you are fully covered by that vaccine, and that’s why you can’t afford to wait.

Queensland is yet to set a date or vaccination threshold for opening its borders, but has been hinting in recent weeks that is might be aiming for some time around the end of November or early December.

D’Ath said more people needed to get the jab before the government released a formal roadmap for reopening the borders.

Meanwhile in the ACT, you may not be able to go to a bookshop today but you can go to the pub or enjoy a (capped) walking tour.

Interesting point from Amy Remeikis.

The PM, aside from being apparently blindsided by the decision, won’t have to grapple with 14 days of quarantine if he attends Glasgow.

Victoria’s shadow minister for Gaming and Liquor regulation Steph Ryan has released a statement calling for the Andrews government to release the findings of the Crown Royal commission final report, which was delivered today:

The Royal commission was hamstrung before it even started after the Andrews government excluded the performance of the Victorian Commission for Gambling and Liquor Regulation (VCGLR) from the terms of reference.

As a result, key whistleblowers were never called to give evidence, despite allegations surfacing that the VCGLR turned a blind eye to alleged money laundering at the casino and links to organised crime.

The premier’s directions have ensured high-profile witnesses were never called to give evidence. No one senior from the VCGLR. No senior Andrews government officials.

It’s several years since journalists revealed allegations of money laundering at the casino, with damning evidence also aired at royal commissions in New South Wales and Western Australia.

Victorians need to know why Daniel Andrews is so desperate to avoid scrutiny of his dealings with Crown.

Thanks as always to Matilda Boseley for expertly guiding us through quite a sequence of announcements.

I’ll be with you, and suitably caffeinated, into the evening.

With that marathon of a day, I shall hand you over to the wonderful Caitlin Cassidy.

Parliament is on for the next fortnight so you will have the amazing Amy Remeikis instead of me, you lucky things!

See you in a few weeks!

Speaking of Tasmania, a supermarket in Hobart’s northern suburbs has been declared an exposure site after it was visited by a coronavirus-infected NSW man who escaped hotel quarantine, reports AAP.

Anyone who visited the Bridgewater Woolworths between 3.15pm and 4.30pm on Tuesday should isolate at home immediately.

Tasmanian public health director Mark Veitch said in a statement:

This site was visited by a case who may have been infectious at the time.

The 31-year-old man flew to Hobart via Melbourne on Monday night without a valid border entry pass.

He went missing from a Travelodge hotel quarantine facility on Tuesday and was arrested hours later at a home in northern Hobart.

The man, who Tasmanian premier Peter Gutwein has described as being uncooperative, later returned a positive test.

Authorities have identified 38 primary and 16 casual contacts of the man, prior to the Woolworths store being declared an exposure site.

Seven primary contacts have returned negative tests so far and all are in quarantine.

The man, who has been fined $3,000, was driven away from the Travelodge by a friend but it remains a mystery as to how he absconded.

Gutwein says extra CCTV cameras have been installed at the hotel and security tightened.

Monday’s Jetstar flight JQ715 from Melbourne to Hobart had already been declared an exposure site, as have several spots at Hobart airport that night.

The man was ordered to undergo hotel quarantine as there were no flights available on Monday night to send him back to NSW.

By the way, we obviously will not know for sure until 2.3opm but there has been plenty of chatter going around about a potential three-day lockdown in Tasmania’s south to curb the spread of infection.