Queensland border reopens to NSW travellers from July 10
Victoria has moved to reinstate lockdown measures for 10 Melbourne postcodes and will divert flights away from the state following a hotel quarantine outbreak. It comes after Queensland finally announced the reopening of borders.
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Queensland borders will reopen to every state bar Victoria, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk confirmed today.
From July 10, people will be allowed into Queensland after filling in a border declaration ensuring they haven’t travelled to Victoria in the 14 days prior.
“If you falsify a document, you will face strict penalties and fines up to $4000. There is also one proviso here, and I hope Queensland families will understand this,” Premier Palaszczuk said.
“If the Chief Health Officer reviews any state or territory at any time and there is outbreaks of community transmission like Victoria, we may have to take further actions.”
Victorians who apply to travel to Queensland will be sent to mandatory quarantine in a hotel for two weeks at their own expense, she said.
The announcement comes just hours after South Australia scrapped a plan to lift all its remaining border restrictions on July 20, as Victoria works to manages multiple outbreaks in Melbourne’s outer suburbs.
Victoria recorded another 64 cases of coronavirus on Tuesday, marking a fortnight of consecutive double-digit increases.
As a result, Premier Daniel Andrews has announced 10 Melbourne postcodes will be placed back into lockdown for the next four weeks.
Those postcodes are: 3038, 3064, 3047, 3060, 3012, 3032, 3055, 3042, 3021, 3046.
People in those postcodes will only be able to leave their homes for four reasons: for care or caregiving, to exercise, to purchase food and other essential items, or to go to work or school.
Hotel quarantine in Victoria has also been suspended for two weeks and an urgent inquiry will be held into the process after several cases were traced back to an infection control breach.
Mr Andrews described hotel quarantine as a “failure in operation” and has asked the Prime Minister to divert flights to other cities while the program is reset.
CALLS FOR LOCAL VIC LOCKDOWNS
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has urged her Victorian counterpart to urgently lock down the suburban coronavirus hot spots in Melbourne as the state’s crisis deepens.
She also urged NSW residents to avoid potentially infected Melbournites to stop the disease spreading here.
“You are the boss of who comes into your home, do not allow anyone from my hotspot in Melbourne, or from greater Melbourne to come into your home,” she said.
“You have the right to say no, please.”
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has also thrown his support behind a potential lockdown of Melbourne suburbs at the centre of the outbreaks.
Mr Morrison also offered Commonwealth resources to secure the 10 suburban hot spots.
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“If indeed a full local lockdown is required in those hot spots, then that’s the decision the premier will take,” Mr Morrison said on Tuesday.
“And they’ll take that decision with the full support and backing through resources from the Commonwealth government, as well as from other states and territories where that is necessary.”
Ms Berejiklian also warned NSW residents were becoming lax on social distancing measures, with the threat of outbreak still elevated.
“Things can change very quickly in terms of the rate of community transmission … I have noticed in and around my movements that people are starting to relax a little bit too much for my liking. Don’t relax,” she said. “Assume everybody in and around you has the disease.”
INTERSTATE TRAVEL BLOW
Premier Steven Marshall announced today SA had abandoned plans to lift quarantine measures for Victoria, NSW and the ACT on July 20 due to the latest health advice.
SA may move separately on NSW and the ACT, but no date has yet been set with the state’s transition committee to consider that issue on Friday.
The decision means any AFL teams coming into South Australia from Victoria would be required to isolate for two weeks, as well as any returning SA teams that played in Melbourne.
“We apologise to the many people who will have to make changes but our number one priority is the health, safety and wellbeing of all South Australians,” he said.
On Wednesday, SA will move to a pre-approval process for anyone coming from interstate, requiring them to fill out an online form before travelling.
The surge in Victorian cases has also delayed the first flight between Australia and New Zealand, which was set to take off from Canberra airport today.
Stephen Byron, the managing director of Canberra Airport, had hoped to have a charter flight from Canberra to Wellington take off today – but ongoing government discussions and the situation south of the border had put a pin in it.
“We’re targeting the last 10 days of July, but it’s really dependent on the health situation and decisions of the Government.”
SALIVA TESTS ROLL OUT IN MELBOURNE
Victorians are being given saliva tests to check for COVID-19 even though they are wrong in more than 15 per cent of cases.
As NSW toughs it out with nasal and throat swabs, NSW Australian Medical Association president Dr Danielle McMullen said they were a bit more intrusive but worth it.
“It’s a bit uncomfortable but it’s not painful and the discomfort is short-lived,” inner west GP Dr McMullen said. “The key message is to get tested.”
NSW recorded five new cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, all returned travellers in hotel quarantine, however Victoria continues to see increased COVID-19 activity.
The cheaper and easier saliva tests are being rolled out door to door in a suburban blitz across 10 Melbourne suburbs where coronavirus has made a comeback with a total of 75 new cases reported to yesterday morning.
It comes after up to 30 per cent of travellers quarantining in Victorian hotels refused to be tested compared to less than two per cent in NSW.
The Melbourne-based Doherty Institute, which developed the saliva test and is working with the federal government on the virus, found the nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal swabs were 95 per cent accurate while saliva was between 84.6 per cent and 87 per cent.
The difference between the tests is that coronavirus often starts in the upper respiratory tract and most viral loads are picked up from the back of the nose, then the throat and then in saliva.
In the lab, they all undergo the same tests, Dr McMullen said.
NO SALIVA TESTS FOR NSW
NSW Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant has ruled out saliva testing in NSW because it is not accurate enough.
She told the parliamentary committee examining the state government’s management of the coronavirus yesterday that the state would review the reliability of new testing.
The main advantage of saliva testing is that it doesn’t need trained testers and is not such a risk to healthcare workers.
Leading infectious diseases expert Professor Sharon Lewin, director of the Doherty Institute, yesterday acknowledged the throat and nose testing was the “gold standard”.
“Much better to have this done than to have no test at all, and we’ll be working with the department in comparing it to throat swabs, as well as testing it in these other populations,” Professor Lewin said.
Originally published as Queensland border reopens to NSW travellers from July 10