Health News at Your Fingertips

The Year 12 vaccination site at Qudos Bank Arena is already very busy.

AAP has more:

As Greater Sydney’s COVID-19 lockdown enters its seventh week, thousands of year 12 students from eight coronavirus-hit council areas in western and southwestern Sydney will get a Pfizer vaccine jab.

Starting on Monday, the mass vaccination push will continue all week at Qudos Bank Arena in Sydney Olympic Park until the 24,000 students are vaccinated.

NSW Health vaccinated almost 2000 supermarket and food distribution workers with AstraZeneca on a day it dubbed “Super Sunday” at the vaccination hub at Sydney Olympic Park.

Meanwhile, 12 suburbs in the Penrith local government are now subject to tougher lockdown rules as COVID-19 continues its spread west.

Residents in the far western fringe of Sydney will be living under the same restrictions that apply to eight other local government areas in the COVID hotspots.

Overnight NSW Health issued alerts for dozens of COVID exposure sites, including five venues in Tamworth in the New England region.

All things going as normal, we should hear from the NSW authorities around 11am

Police are looking for a missing teen in Sydney’s west:

Atem Mayol, aged 17, was last seen at a home on Luxford Road, Bidwill, about 7.45am yesterday (Saturday 7 August 2021).

Officers from Mount Druitt Police Area Command commenced inquiries into his whereabouts a short time later after he failed to return home.

Police and family hold concerns for Atem’s welfare as he has a serious health condition.

Atem is described as being of African appearance, about 185-190cm tall and of a thin build, and has black braided hair and dark coloured eyes. He was last seen wearing a black and red coloured jacket with black tracksuit pants.

He is known to frequent the Ropes Crossing, St Marys and Mt Druitt areas.

If sighted, contact police to assist immediately.

AAP has broken down the latest Newspoll:

Prime minister Scott Morrison’s personal approval rating has dived amid lockdowns in NSW, Victoria and Queensland and frustration with the vaccine rollout.

There’s also been a fall in confidence in his federal government’s management of the pandemic as state governments try to stop the spread of Covid-19, according to the latest Newspoll published in Monday’s the Australian.

For the first time, more people – 49% of those surveyed – say they are unhappy with Morrison’s management of the pandemic.

People were even more unhappy with the prime minister’s handling of the vaccine rollout with 59% of respondents saying they were dissatisfied.

Popular support for the federal Coalition and Labor remains neck and neck at 39% since the last poll three weeks ago.

The two-party-preferred split of 53% to 47%, in Labor’s favour, also remains the same.

Morrison still leads opposition leader Anthony Albanese in the preferred prime minister stakes. Morrison dropped two points to 49% while Albanese picked up three points to 36%.

Satisfaction with Albanese’s personal performance remains the same as it was three weeks ago, at 38%.

The Newspoll, conducted between 4 and 7 August, was based on surveys of 1,527 voters across metropolitan and regional areas.

All of the cases are linked, which is good news – one was in quarantine for the infectious period.

Authorities are hoping the lockdown will cut down on those infectious in the community numbers now.

More Queensland pharmacies have come onboard to deliver the vaccine, this time in north and central Queensland.

The Pharmacy Guild reports that 137 community pharmacies, mostly in the regions, will begin administering Covid vaccinations this week. That’s on top of the 516 pharmacies already approved for the program, meaning there will be more than 700 pharmacies involved by the end of the week.

Simon Birmingham was asked by the ABC why the government is against stimulus for people getting the vaccine but is not looking to recoup any money from businesses that received jobkeeper and didn’t need it, spending it on dividends and bonuses:

The businesses that claimed it were facing genuine threat of long-term lockdowns and shutdowns at the time. Now, for many, it ended up being a slightly better proposition than had been expected at that stage.

But they were all eligible for it under the rules struck at the time, because we wanted to make sure we could cover off that uncertainty. We don’t think it’s appropriate to create a circumstance where now they are vilified with some sort of pretence that they weren’t eligible, when they were eligible, and the actions of government and those businesses saved many thousands, if not millions, of Australian jobs.

There is no national update, so here is one Casey Briggs from the ABC has put together – how long, on current vaccination pace, it will take each jurisdiction to reach 70% (and then 80%):

Cars are lining up for Australia’s first drive-through vaccination site:

There is enough AstraZeneca vaccine for anyone who wants it. If you are seeking to get vaccinated, investigate whether it is an option for you – and remember Victoria has now opened up hubs where it has been made available.

There are still questions over what the federal government did last year, when striking vaccine deals, given that Australia is only getting enough supplies of the mRNA vaccines now.

Simon Birmingham says: “We can all run on the ‘ifs’ of hindsight, but we don’t live get to live in hindsight, we live in the here and now”:

Newsflash: turns out Australia is not doing so great on climate, despite the government’s claims.

As Adam Morton reports:

Claims by the Morrison government that Australia has done more to cut greenhouse gas emissions than other countries have been challenged by an analysis that found it has gone backwards compared with similar countries over the past 15 years.

Energy analyst Dr Hugh Saddler ranked the performance of 23 OECD countries and Russia on eight climate measures, including share of electricity from non-fossil fuels, per capita emissions from transport and overall emissions intensity of each economy.

He found Australia was ranked 20th or worse in seven of the eight categories. In relative terms, it had not improved in any category since 2005 and had gone backwards compared with other developed countries in four.

We don’t have the official numbers for Victoria has yet but here is what is happening on the socials:

Welcome to the second week of the first spring sitting.

What’s shifted since the weekend?

Not a lot.

Moderna, the vaccine Dolly Parton helped fund, is about to be approved by the TGA and will be available in Australia from mid-September. That’s another mRNA vaccine which will help bolster Australia’s stocks, as the nation moves towards its goal of 70% to 80% vaccinated.

As Katharine Murphy reported yesterday:

The Moderna vaccine will be available in Australia from mid-September, adding to the country’s use of AstraZeneca and Pfizer, the Morrison government says.

The announcement on Sunday came as the Victorian government revealed it would make AstraZeneca available to people aged 18 to 39 at nine of its state-run clinics and set up Australia’s first drive-through vaccination hub.

NSW is still struggling to contain its winter Delta outbreak, with Barnaby Joyce’s regional electorate among those having to check venues of concern. It wasn’t so long ago Joyce was saying country electorates really “couldn’t give a shit” about Covid hitting the cities, because coal prices were at a record high.

Testing sites have also been set up in Dubbo:

The latest Newspoll has Scott Morrison’s approval ratings in negative territory, with the LNP not shifting its two-party-preferred setback either, as the Covid outbreak begins to bite.

Businesses are also annoyed after Morrison said governments would not be creating any special laws to allow companies to mandate vaccines, instead recommending that they “carefully” navigate existing workplace laws.

South-east Queensland is out of lockdown but Cairns in the far north has entered it, while Victoria is nervously watching numbers.

All in all, the country is in a watch-and-wait scenario, and no one is enjoying it.

You’ve got Amy Remeikis to take you through the day’s events, with Mike Bowers providing all the colour and depth. Your Canberra team of Katharine Murphy, Sarah Martin, Paul Karp and Daniel Hurst are ready to fill you in with all the detail, and the Guardian brains trust around the country will let you know when something is happening in your patch. I hope you managed some rest at the weekend because this week seems likely to get messy.

Ready?