Health News at Your Fingertips

Victorian chief health officer Martin Foley said Victoria was “very keen to reopen our schools as soon as possible” — but unlike the NSW government, which announced a return to school date today, he will not put a date on it.

He said the opening up of vaccines to teenagers was one of the factors that would influence the return to school date.

And, as he has throughout the press conference, he put it back on the federal government not providing enough Pfizer doses to meet demand.

Foley said:

The one constraint holding us back at being able to nail that down is the issue of certainty of vaccination supply. As we indicated, from 450,000 (appointments) to 9000 that we just allocated, it shows that Victorians want to get vaccinated, young Victorians want to get vaccinated.

The vaccination for 12-year-olds and above ,we want to get them vaccinated. All of these factors go into making sure that our schools can reopen carefully and safely… because Delta finds the unvaccinated. This particular outbreak has been disproportionately in younger people and we have to make sure that when we do reopen schools it’s done safely.

He indicated the state government was working on a vaccination target for reopening schools — both in terms of vaccinating students, but also vaccinating the adults who are around the children.

Victorian press conference:

Victoria’s health minister, Martin Foley, would again not be drawn on whether the Victorian lockdown would be extended past 2 September.

It seems pretty unlikely that restrictions would be lifted given the continued discovery of mystery cases.

Foley said:

As a premier indicated yesterday and the chief health officer indicates every time he is asked, we will make all of those decisions based on the most up-to-date advice and, at the moment, with another six days to go, it is too early to make that call.

Foley was asked if he believed that Victoria continued to see cases because people were not following the rules. He says some cases are due to that, but not all.

A very, very small number of people clearly do not follow the rules and, as a result, all that does is prolong the public-health lockdown measures.

Asked if Victorian authorities would “get serious and start fining people for doing the wrong thing” if they had tested positive and admitted to contact tracers they had breached restrictions, Foley said that could make people less willing to be open in contact tracing interviews.

Asked if Victoria was now likely to remain in lockdown until it reached a vaccination rate of 70% to 80%, Foley said:

I don’t know about that but I know there have been public health measures as there have been for the last 18 months in place. We will make the call based on the public health advice at the most up-to-date set of data and information that we have.

We know that this is really in the hands of, not just our hard-working public health team and our local public health units, not just the frontline healthcare workers, but all the Victorian community, to follow the rules and make sure that we get out of the hard lockdown as quick as we can.

Victorian press conference:

Victoria’s Covid-19 commander, Jeroen Weimar, said the growing case numbers in Melbourne’s western suburbs are “a significant area of concern”.

There have been 150 cases reported in that area in recent days, including the 46 today.

Weimar said:

We believe there are multiple chains of transmission and we’re looking at quite significant community transmission ongoing.

We really encourage the wider community particularly in the western suburbs to please get tested and if you have any symptoms or concern about access to exposure sites – there are a large number of them – we are seeing a great response on the ground, very busy testing stations yesterday, please keep coming forward.

The health minister, Martin Foley, said it should not be assumed that high case numbers in the western suburbs was due to people not following the rules, but said there were some instances across the state of people not following the rules.

Foley said:

The western suburbs is disproportionately a community that is full of essential workers and permitted workers. They are out and about and there are other issues, about a very small number of some people, not just confined to the western suburbs, who do not follow the rules. And that puts everyone at risk.

So, it happens to be the western suburbs but that reflects the nature of demographics and work patterns as opposed to anything particularly described to the people of the west.

New Zealand has reported 70 new cases of coronavirus in the community, bringing the total number in the outbreak to 347, as parts of the country wait to hear if the lockdown will be extended or downgraded.

Of the cases, 333 are in Auckland and 14 are in Wellington. Many of the cases are among the Samoan community and linked to a sub-cluster who assembled at the Assembly of God church in Māngere.

Nineteen cases are in hospital, with one person in intensive care.

As of Friday morning, 29,851 individual close contacts have been identified and around 76% of these have had a test.

There are more than 500 locations listed for potential exposure, including schools, universities, hospitals, churches, bars, restaurants, airports, a casino and a rugby game.

On Thursday, 90,757 vaccine doses were administered – a daily record. More than 3.11 million doses in total have now been given out.

The decision to place the country into a level 4 lockdown – the highest setting – was made after one case of the Delta variant in the community emerged last week. Auckland is in lockdown until midnight Tuesday, while the rest of the country is in lockdown until midnight tonight Friday.

The prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, will update the nation on any changes to the lockdown settings on Friday afternoon.

Queensland press conference:

The Queensland deputy premier, Steven Miles, says his NSW counterpart, John Barilaro, has reached out to “collaborate on border arrangements”.

The hard border between the two states has created significant problems in border communities.

Queensland authorities had requested – and had rejected – a suggestion that border checkpoints could be moved further south, to allow people in NSW border communities to travel into Queensland.

Miles said Queensland had restrictions that “people in other cities and states can only dream of” but acknowledged that the border measures had a disproportionate impact on surrounding communities.

He said Barilaro had approached the state “to work with them to collaborate on border arrangements, to reduce the impacts on them and their community”.

It is unclear yet what such an arrangement would look like.

The NSW premier, Gladys Berejiklian, was asked about this, and said she hoped the Queensland government could provide some relief:

I encourage them to look favourably on those people doing a tough and a look at the existence or otherwise of cases there.

Victorian press conference:

Turning back to Victoria for a moment.

Victorian health minister Martin Foley says nearly 5 million doses of Covid-19 vaccinations have been delivered in Victoria, of which 2 million were delivered in state hubs.

Foley says the state hubs have now hit their first target as part of the push to administer 1 million doses by the end of September – 300,000 doses so far.

We would urge people to continue to come forward and to continue to be patient and be generous to the hard-working state vaccination clinic teams. More appointments open up each week as we can be guaranteed supply, and we will get through the system as quickly as we possibly can to get to you.

There is huge demand out there at the moment, and huge uptake of the appointments as they become available. That is all clearly being driven by both Victorians want to get vaccinated and constrained in so far as it has to be by the supplies we get from the commonwealth.

Foley said of the hundreds of thousands of vaccine appointments announced on Wednesday, only 9,000 were still available.

This shows a couple of things. Firstly, hesitancy is not a problem with Victorians in those age groups who want to come forward and get vaccinated.

The other thing it shows is that we need more supply. If we are going to continue this rate of fill-in, the opportunities as they become available, while at the same time making sure we continue to work the priority groups that we committed to help the commonwealth on, to meet the aged care and disability requirements for the commonwealth… and just continuing the mop up of our frontline healthcare workers and other priority group, we need all the supply we could lay our hands on.

Queensland has recorded a second straight day with no community Covid-19 cases and is easing local restrictions from 4pm.

A hundred people can attend a home party or gathering. Dancing is back in nightclubs. More people can go into pubs.

Football stadiums and theatres can have 100% capacity, but people are still encouraged to wear masks.

“It’s now been 20 days since we’ve had a case active in the community,” the premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, says.

Palaszczuk is giving the daily Covid update from the front bar of a Brisbane pub.

Another day of no cases in Queensland is “fantastic news”, the chief health officer, Jeanette Young, says.

“Going forward, because of what we’re seeing going on in NSW, particularly close to our border, it is important that we maintain some restrictions, particularly masks.”