Coronavirus: Victoria records five deaths, 357 cases as Greg Hunt says COVID is accelerating
Greg Hunt has said there is a “global acceleration” in the pandemic as five more coronavirus patients have died in Victoria, where cases jumped by 357.
Coronavirus
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Health Minister Greg Hunt has said there are now 13,950 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 145 deaths in Australia.
While there is a “global acceleration” in the pandemic, he described the situation in Victoria as stable, but there are significant numbers of cases.
Before any success can be declared, Mr Hunt said Victorians need to see a week of sustained lowering of numbers.
Five more coronavirus patients have died overnight in Victoria, where cases jumped by 357.
The latest deaths include a woman in her 90s, man and woman in their 80s, woman in her 70s and a woman in her 60s, bringing the state’s total death toll to 61.
Dozens of Victorians are fighting for life, with 42 in intensive care.
Of the 3995 active cases in Victoria, 313 are healthcare workers. More than 500 cases are active in 45 aged care facilities, split evenly between staff and residents.
Premier Daniel Andrews on Saturday declined to rule out further restrictions.
“Masks are effectively our stage four,” he said.
“If they are worn by everybody, we may not need to go further. We can’t rule out going further with rule changes, but it’s a big game changer.”
Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton hinted that the six-week lockdown in metropolitan Melbourne and Mitchell Shire could be extended.
“I don’t think we’ll be looking at opening up in a couple of weeks, necessarily,” he said.
“But we do have to just watch it continuously. It has been stubborn.
“In terms of the daily change, but we are coming in with new interventions all the time … there is nothing that will all of a sudden see numbers hit a zero in the next couple of weeks.
“When you have got outbreaks that are really difficult to manage, those will have ongoing cases for some time yet.”
VICTORIA RECORDS SIX NEW DEATHS
The Prime Minister’s comments came after Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews confirmed six Victorians have died from coronavirus within the past 24 hours.
He said Victoria has recorded 300 new cases in the past 24 hours since Thursday’s 11.30am briefing and a further seven deaths overnight. This brings the state death toll to 55.
249 of the 300 cases are currently under investigation.
Premier Andrews announced that 41 Victorians are currently in intensive care.
It was also revealed that Victoria Police conducted 5,300 spot checks between Thursday and Friday, and issued 101 fines and 63 warnings to residents either not following social distancing rules or refusing to wear masks.
During the press conference, Premier Andrews said that had Victoria not returned to Stage Three restrictions “we would not have been reporting 300 cases a day, but thousands.”
The Premier continued, “We have, it seems, avoided that. And that is a wholly good thing because for every thousand people that are positive each day, there will be many hundreds that finish up in hospital and there will be many who die. We don’t want that, and want to avoid that.”
The National Cabinet meeting comes after Prime Minister Scott Morrison was unable to reassure Australians about overseas travel in the absence of a vaccine for the deadly coronavirus.
US OPTIMISTIC FOR A VACCINE
America’s foremost medical expert leading the fight against COVID-19, Dr Anthony Fauci, is optimistic a vaccine will be ready by the end of the year due to the speed of successful research into the pandemic.
Dr Fauci has become the face of the fight against coronavirus in American and across the world as the disease’s global spread slows no sign of slowing down.
His battles against US President Donald Trump have also shown the divide that exists between the political and medical fraternities in many countries.
Dr Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has described the race for a COVID-19 vaccine as: “the fastest we’ve ever launched into a process of developing safe and effective vaccines for an important disease in history”.
ABC News reports, Dr Fauci is confident medical science is on the right track to stopping the virus in its tracks.
“We saved, at least a year or more by technological advances alone,” he told Sal Khan, founder of the online courses nonprofit Khan Academy.
“My projection — which is just cautious optimism, this is no guarantee — is that by the end of the year, the beginning of 2021, we’ll have a vaccine that we could start distributing to people,” Fauci said.
“So that’s the timetable. It’s extremely quick, but it’s not sacrificing safety, nor is it sacrificing scientific integrity. It’s just doing things more quickly by essentially going to the next step and taking a financial risk, before you actually get the answer to the previous step.”
AUSTRALIA CONTINUES ‘AGGRESSIVE’ APPROACH
Australia will continue to pursue a strategy of “aggressive” suppression of the coronavirus with national leaders to focus on ensuring every confirmed case is traced within a day.
Acting Chief Medical Officer Professor Paul Kelly said the National Cabinet meeting on Friday has resolved to continue to pursue suppression, not eradication of the deadly virus, amid a horror second wave outbreak in Victoria.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the goal had “always been no community transmission”.
“There will always be cases that come because Australia has not completely shut itself off from the world,” he said.
“To do so would be reckless, but that no community transmission, when the vast majority of states and territories have been at now effectively for some time.
“And that’s certainly where we want to get back to in Victoria and NSW, and that’s where our efforts are focused.”
Mr Morrison said National Cabinet also adopted a principle that in times of outbreak is the need to ensure that your emergency response and your health response are integrated.
“There is a health response … but also emergency management, supporting towns particularly in regional areas and things of that nature and a lot of logistics and co-ordination that needs to go into the emergency response,” he said.
“So the health and emergency side of these things must be fully integrated.
“That is substantially occurring and we’ve just decided to tighten up those processes and procedures to ensure that that occurs even more so in the future.”
Mr Morrison said leaders agreed to an “even more comprehensive”set of data measures which are necessary to ensure they are collectively aware of what is occurring in all the states and territories and “that we’re picking up at the earliest possible opportunity where there may be some vulnerabilities”.
“That not only goes to case numbers and thing of that nature which we’ve had for some time,” he said.
“But how quickly cases are being identified, contacts are made, isolated, tracing done for known contacts and then isolation and testing of those.
“Our testing regime remains very strong, and particularly in terms of reagent and the kit that is required to do all these things.
“But given the scale of testing that is taking place, particularly in NSW and Victoria, we’re working to further upgrade the support that we have for labs around the country to ensure that we keep up that pace – which we will.”
Mr Morrison said National Cabinet also agrees to freight movement protocol across state borders including how drivers are tested.
He also said it was “concerning” that about 25 per cent of Victorians with COVID-19 were not answering calls for contact tracing after they discovered they had the virus.
“There are challenges in parts of Melbourne,” Mr Morrison said.
For those that fail to answer calls, he said “we’ll knock on the door”.
“If they don’t come for testing, we’ll drive a truck to the end of their street and we’ll test them there,” he added.
“The way that you deal with this is you don’t get frustrated about it. You don’t wallow in concern about it. You just take action.”
Mr Morrison was referring to Australian Defence Force personnel and workers from Victoria’s Department of Health and Human Services.
FAUCI PRAISES TRUMP’S NEW ‘CRISP’ COVID BRIEFINGS
White House coronavirus task force member Dr Anthony Fauci said he’s glad President Trump is keeping his renewed COVID-19 briefings “short and crisp”.
The infectious disease expert, celebrated by Trump critics for his willingness to fault the US pandemic response, has not joined Mr Trump at his three briefings this week, which featured a subdued chief executive urging mask use and social distancing.
In the old days, the briefings could last well over an hour and the President sometimes strayed from the script and found himself easy fodder for his critics.
But the President is now telling people to wear a mask, wash their hands and social distance. He even cancelled his own huge Replican nomination party next month.
“The president has gone out there, and is saying things now that I think are important, has to do with wearing masks, crowded — staying away from the crowded places. So I think that they have been helpful now,” Fauci said in a webchat with the Washington Post.
“They’ve been short and crisp, which I think is good when you’re trying to get a message across. So I think the last I think it’s three times that the president has been out. I think it’s important that that continues: short, crisp, have defined the message that people can understand, such as wearing masks and staying away from crowds.”
Dr Fauci, longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said he and Trump spoke on the phone last week, and that he had urged the president to take a more restrained approach toward COVID-19 messaging.
While sections of the media have been desperately trying to get the doctor to hint at bad blood with Mr Trump, he has always laughed it off and said they get along fine.
“It was a good call, and it had a lot to do with encourages — encouraging to do the kinds of things that we’re seeing being done right now,” Dr Fauci said.
Dr Fauci said he doesn’t feel a need to return himself to the White House briefing room, where he was a fixture during daily briefings in March and April. His absences this week attracted media interest, but Fauci said he doesn’t feel compelled to attend because briefings can feature “questions that have a little bit to do with health.”
“I tend to like to see press briefings that are crisp and to the point,” he said.
The doctor said he doesn’t believe he made any mistakes in advising the president on the pandemic, pushing back on Trump allies who highlighted his early discouragement of mask-wearing to slow transmission of the virus.
He said he hadn’t realised how common asymptomatic transmission was at the time, or considered that use of cloth face coverings could avert possible shortages of masks for medical workers.
“It’s very interesting when you use the word mistake,” Dr Fauci said. “You look at the data, you look at the evidence and you make either a recommendation or a policy. When the information changes, and you change what you’re saying, it’s because you’re wanting to follow the evidence in the data. And that’s the right thing to do. So do you then call that a mistake? Back then, well back then, it wasn’t a mistake.”
MORRISON TELLS ACA ‘TRAVEL NOT FORSEEABLE’
When cross-examined by A Current Affair’s Tracy Grimshaw on Thursday night, Mr Morrison had no clear plan about reopening the nation’s borders or what life might look like outside of lockdown.
“Right now, the opportunity for large scale travel beyond our borders is not foreseeable,” Mr Morrison said.
Australians could not pin their hopes to a vaccine — or despair that there might never be one. Instead, they should focus on “what your opportunities are ahead. That’s where I need Australians’ heads, I need them looking up,” he said.
“I need them looking forward, because when they’re doing that, they’re going to be encouraging each other, they’re going to be opening their businesses, they’re going to be doing whatever it takes to keep people in jobs.”
Mr Morrison said Australia “will deal with whatever circumstance that confronts us because that’s what Australians do,” he said.
The prime minister said he is hopeful that Australia and New Zealand will come to a ‘safe travel’ agreement between the two nations in 2020 and he is in discussions with Jacinda Ardern. She has said that community outbreaks in Australia would mean a “no-go” for New Zealand easing borders.
In the absence of a firmer plan, Mr Morrison focused on following health advice.
“You keep washing your hands, you keep your 1.5 distance, you keep your health system’s capacity strong, you, you keep ensuring people book and sit at tables,” he said. “That’s what you do [without a vaccine]. You run your country, you run your society, in a COVID-safe way.”
CHINESE CITY OF 6M IN EMERGENCY QUARANTINE
A city in northeastern China with a population of six million people has launched emergency disease-control measures to stop COVID-19 spreading.
Dalian, a port city, in Liaoning province, has three native cases since Wednesday after reporting zero local cases for nearly four months.
The authorities urged their residents to not leave the city unless there is an emergency.
TRUMP CANCELS REPUBLICAN CONVENTION
US President Donald Trump has cancelled the planned Republican Convention in a major backflip sparked by the uncontrolled spread of coronavirus across the country.
Conventions are typically among the most symbolic events of a presidential election race and set the stage for the final run-up to voting as candidates formally accept their party’s nomination amid much made-for-television fanfare.
“To have a big convention, it is not the right time,” Mr Trump said at the White House.
“There’s nothing more important than keeping our people safe.”
Mr Trump said a “flare-up” in Florida, to where he had moved the convention after its planned location in South Carolina had refused to lift coronavirus restrictions, made the event impossible.
“We didn’t want to take any chances,” he said.
“It can be nothing like our last convention unfortunately.
“It’s a different world and it will be for a little while.”
Instead Republicans will adopt a similar format to that planned by Democrats, who postponed their convention by a month but still dramatically scaled it back to a mainly online event.
The move comes as American coronavirus infections top four million, with 70,000 new cases a day, more than 140,000 deaths and a predicted one million cases in the next fortnight.
More than a thousand Americans are dying each day.
Authorities in Jacksonville, Florida, initially embraced the planned convention but this week warned they could not guarantee security or the safety of attendees.
“I just felt it was wrong to have people going to what turns out to be a hotspot,” Mr Trump said of his decision.
“The key is we want it to go away without a lot of death, without a lot of problems.”
Criticism of Mr Trump’s coronavirus response has driven his approval to among the lowest point of his presidency and he currently trails his Democrat rival by double digits in national polling and by lesser margin in several key swing states he needs to win a second term.
Among them is Mr Trump’s home state of Florida, which he won in 2016, and in which Mr Biden has opened up a 13 point lead in a new poll released today.
MORE COMMUNITY SPREAD, DEATHS IN VICTORIA
Victoria on Thursday recorded another 403 new cases of coronavirus, the third worst daily increase since the pandemic began.
It brought the total number of confirmed cases in the state to 7125, with 3630 of those active infections.
Premier Daniel Andrews said five more Victorians had died from the virus overnight, taking the state’s total to 49.
Four men, aged in their 50s, 70s, 80s and 90s, and a woman aged in her 70s, all passed away.
The number of Victorians in hospital with the virus has decreased by four to 201, with 40 patients in intensive care.
Only 69 of the new cases were connected to known and contained outbreaks, while 334 remained under investigation.
Wednesday marked Victoria’s worst day with 484 new cases – a positive test rate of 1.96 per cent.
It comes as new restrictions came into force requiring people in metropolitan Melbourne and the Mitchell Shire to wear a mask when outside their home.
Wednesday’s grim tally marked a significant rise on Tuesday’s figure of 374 and smashed the previous record of 428 last Friday.
Mr Andrews said the “ref number” – the number of people a positive case infects – was about one.
He said if it stayed at one case numbers would stabilise but they would not drop.
Mr Andrews said Victoria needed to get the “ref number” below one, so that less people were becoming infected with each positive case.
“This is a second wave that’s all about the 1 and 2 per centres, it’s about all the small things,” he said.
“Stability is not enough, it won’t get us beyond this, we need to make those small instrumental gains.”
Mr Andrews said everybody needed to get tested as soon as they had any symptoms, which would also help drive the “ref number” below zero.
It comes after The Australian reported that Victorians could face lockdown restrictions until Christmas if coronavirus case numbers don’t start to fall.
The publication understands the highest levels of government have discussed restrictions lasting many months, even if the current lockdown is eventually relaxed.
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews is believed to want daily case numbers to fall to single digits before reopening the economy, according to The Australian.
It comes after Victoria yesterday recorded 484 infections – a national record.
Mr Andrews said on Wednesday that the current six-week lockdown could continue if virus continues to spread.
“Unless we have people who get tested staying at home and isolating until they get their results, then we will not see these numbers come down … and a six-week shutdown will not be for six weeks. It will run for much longer than that,” he said.
US RECORDS 1 MILLION NEW CASES IN TWO WEEKS
On Thursday, it emerged the United States was on track to record one million new cases of COVID-19 in just two weeks – as more than 1,100 deaths were recorded in 24 hours, levels not seen in two months.
The number of infections across the country topped 4 million cases on Thursday and more than 143,000 Americans have now died from COVID-19.
In the past week, the average number of new daily cases has reached 66,000 and, based on that trajectory, cases will increase by one million by the first week of August.
There has been an uptick in deaths, on average, across the US since the beginning of July after hotspot states including Florida, Texas, Arizona and California saw explosions in cases and hospitalisation.
Meanwhile, California surpassed New York on Wednesday to have the highest number of COVID-19 cases in the country. It is partly due to robust testing in a state with more than twice the population of New York.
The total number of infections in the most populous US state is now at 413,579 after adding a record 12,807 spike in new daily cases – the biggest single-day increase since the pandemic started.
New York currently has 408,181 total infections throughout the state.
New York has recorded by far the most deaths of any US state at more than 32,000 with California in fourth place with over 8,000 deaths.
If California were a country, it would rank fifth in the world for total coronavirus cases behind only the United States, Brazil, India and Russia.
GLOBAL COVID CASES SOAR AS US DEATHS ACCELERATE
Global cases of coronavirus have passed 15 million as America returns to its grim milestone of 1000 deaths from COVID-19 per day.
Officials warn that the spread or coronavirus shows no sign of slowing down internationally.
In the US the shocking death toll comes as states across the country report record-breaking numbers of new cases, particularly in those states where mask-wearing is shunned, such as Louisiana, Texas and Florida.
More state leaders are now making masks a requirement as testing labs and hospitals are raising the alarm and unable to cope with the massive influx of new patients.
Officials are again debating whether to send children back to school.
US GOVERNMENT MAKES MASSIVE VACCINE PURCHASE
The US federal government has placed a $1.95 billion ($A2.8bn) upfront order for 100 million doses of pharmaceutical company Pfizer’s potential coronavirus vaccine under the Trump administration’s push to have a shot ready by next year.
Americans would receive Pfizer’s jabs for free under the deal announced on Wednesday, assuming the vaccine that is currently in development with the German biotech firm BioNTech gains federal Food and Drug Administration approval.
“We’ve been committed to making the impossible possible by working tirelessly to develop and produce in record time a safe and effective vaccine to help bring an end to this global health crisis,” Dr. Albert Boula, Pfizer’s chairman and CEO, said in a statement.
The deal, which also gives the US government the option to acquire up to 500 million additional doses, is the largest yet awarded under the government’s aim to deliver a COVID-19 vaccine by January.
According to the New York Post, the Trump administration has committed billions of dollars in federal funding to four other companies racing to produce a vaccine, which is viewed as key to ending the deadly global pandemic.
BioNTech and Pfizer are working on four experimental COVID-19 vaccines, two of which have received “Fast Track” designation from the FDA to speed up their development.
The companies released data earlier this month showing that the most advanced vaccine candidate can produce “neutralising” COVID-19 antibodies in patients who receive it.
The firms said they expect to seek emergency authorisation or some kind of regulatory approval by October if their clinical studies are successful.