QLD: No community transmission - 3 cases in HQ.
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Second international flight touches down in Victoria
Victoria’s hotel quarantine has reopened for a third time, after an overhaul of ventilation systems and employee conditions.
The first flight touched down from Colombo, Sri Lanka at around 4:30am with 11 people onboard. They’ve now been taken to the Intercontinental Hotel in the city.
A second flight from Singapore landed a short time ago.
Up to 800 travellers are able to arrive this week, with the cap to be lifted to 1,000 by April 15.
Acting Police Minister Danny Pearson has told ABC Radio Melbourne the government has done everything it can to make hotel quarantine safe.
“There’s no risk free approach to this, the risk free approach would be to shut down all borders, no flights coming in at all, no air frieght coming in at all for example, but what we’ve done is we’ve reduced the risk as much as we possibly can,” he said.
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Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield also said there were 23 new cases, all in hotel quarantine. 17 of those came from India via United Arab Emirates.
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The state’s rollout of the COVID-19 vaccination program was on schedule, with 129,537 vaccine doses administered so far, acting Premier James Merlino said on Thursday, with another 150,000 doses or more to be delivered by May 16
Mr Merlino said his government would offer to inoculate Victorians in other cohorts that it was not currently earmarked to inoculate, easing the burden on federal vaccine providers.
Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt has welcomed the offer.
the Mecure inn here in Ballarat and the melbourne showgrounds will be come two high volume centres
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So Half of HQ Workers in Melbourne are not even vaccinated? Are you serious? Who cares about anyone these people should be at the top.
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https://www.dhhs.vic.gov.au/coronavirus-update-victoria-8-april-2021
Victoria has recorded no new cases of coronavirus since yesterday.
This is the 41st day in a row that Victoria has recorded no locally acquired cases.
Update: Viral fragments detected in south-east wastewater catchment
Fragments of the virus that causes COVID-19 have been recently detected in wastewater samples taken from a sewer catchment in Melbourne’s south east.
Anyone with even mild COVID-19 symptoms is urged to get tested, especially people who live in or have visited these areas from 4 to 6 April:
- Clayton, Clayton South, Dingley Village, Glen Waverley, Mount Waverley, Mulgrave, Notting Hill, Springvale, Springvale South and Wheelers Hill.
Fragments of the virus detected in wastewater may be due to a person with COVID-19 being in the early active infectious phase or it could be because someone is continuing to shed the virus after the early infectious period.
Update: Vaccinations
A total of 5778 COVID-19 vaccination doses were administered yesterday by state commissioned services across Victoria. This brings the total number of vaccine doses administered by the Department as of yesterday to 129,537.
The Victorian Government is targeting the administration of 300,000 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine at state commissioned sites by mid-May.
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Because of this, NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced this afternoon that arrivals from India were being suspended between April 11 and April 28.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/124783404/covid19-india-unfairly-targeted-by-new-zealands-temporary-ban-on-arrivals-community-leader-says
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Prime Minister Scott Morrison has called a media conference for tonight in regards to the Astra Zeneca vaccine, according to Peter Mitchell at the end of Seven News Melbourne tonight.
Scomo finally giving in to the pressure to stop the AstraZeneca vaccine?
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If it’s anything like Perth, it’s because they’re refusing to get the vaccine (In Perth, 54% had their first dose as of last week).
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Scott Morrison has confirmed tonight that the health advice is that the Pfizer vaccine is now the recommended vaccine for adults under the age of 50.
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This is good news then?
If the report is correct, 20 million doses of Pfizer will be secured.
We will probably need more, but is a good start.
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They are first in line. They’re probably refusing to take it just like border workers who’ve had a very low take up. The government is unlikely to make it mandatory.
Only just enough (or maybe slightly short of enough) for 16-50yr olds and it’ll come down to how fast they can get acquite those doses domestically.
Nightmare scenario for the federal government at this stage as they’re now in a situation where they will no longer receive much in the way of goodwill for the way the vaccine rollout has gone. While I think the far-left conspiracy theories surrounding the AZ/Oxford vaccine deal and the federal government are dumb and ignorant, they’ve certainly caught themselves short. Personally I feel like too much faith was put into the UQ/CSL vaccine with minimal back-up plans in terms of ordering enough alternative vaccines.
It’ll be interesting to see if an attempt is made to acquire additional vaccines from other suppliers at this stage J&J applied to the TGA for approval of its one dose vaccine, which makes me wonder if it will end up getting ordered at some stage.
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How far past October do we think we will go now? 2022 Easter?
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I think we’ll still see all adults voluntarily able to get a vaccine by the end of the year but they’re likely going to have to invoke the use of mass vaccination centres rather than rely on GPs, I suspect once the US rollout is mostly completed come June / July additional supply / order capacity from Pfizer / Moderna / J&J will be more readily available regardless of the EU in-fighting and issues.
That doesn’t even factor in the 50 million doses of Novavax on order already once Phase III is completed.
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I’m not convinced… the uk has done an amazing job with vaccinating but far too little have had the second jab. Also they are saying they are prioritising but I know two of my friends who received their first jab in the last 2 weeks and they only had covid 2 months ago. And they are under 40 and healthy. I don’t understand the sense in that.
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Where did you see this? The Age report says almost all have had at least the first dose.
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