Coronavirus: Vaccine warning; Victoria, NSW report zero locally acquired COVID-19 cases
The World Health Organisation has warned coronavirus vaccines do not mean the crisis is over, as Victoria and NSW reported zero locally acquired cases.
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The rollout of vaccines to fight the COVID-19 pandemic will not by itself eliminate the deadly coronavirus, the World Health Organisation has claimed.
The WHO warned against complacency and what it said was an erroneous belief that because vaccines are on the near-horizon, the crisis is over.
“Vaccines do not equal zero COVID,” WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan told a virtual press conference on Friday (local time).
“By themselves, they will not do the job,” he said, adding that “the vaccine will not be with everyone early next year”.
Britain on Wednesday became the first Western country to approve a vaccine for general use, piling pressure on other countries to follow suit swiftly.
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that progress on vaccines “gives us all a lift and we can now start to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
“However, WHO is concerned that there is a growing perception that the pandemic is over.
“The truth is that at present, many places are witnessing very high transmission of the virus, which is putting enormous pressure on hospitals, intensive care units and health workers.” Global coronavirus infections passed 65 million on Friday.
The novel coronavirus has killed at least 1.5 million people since the outbreak emerged in China last December.
“The pandemic still has a long a way to run and decisions made by leaders and citizens in the coming days will determine both the course of the virus in the short term and when this pandemic will ultimately end,” said Mr Tedros.
Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s COVID-19 technical lead, added that these decisions “can mean life and death for us, life and death for our family”.
According to the WHO’s overview of candidate vaccines, 51 are currently being tested on humans, 13 of which have reached final-stage mass testing.
A further 163 candidate vaccines are being developed in laboratories with a view to eventual human trials.
NO COMMUNITY TRANSMISSION IN NSW, VIC
No new cases of locally acquired coronavirus have been recorded in New South Wales in the 24 hours to 8pm Friday night.
NSW state health authorities confirmed zero new cases had been recorded within the state from local transmission.
Two new coronavirus cases were recorded from returned overseas travellers, who are within the state’s hotel quarantine system.
NSW Health has also linked the recent infection of a Sydney hotel worker to a US strain of the virus.
“As reported yesterday afternoon, the viral genome sequence from the recent COVID-19 who works at a Sydney quarantine hotel complex does not match the virus strains seen in recent clusters in Australia,” Dr Stephen Corbett said.
“The virus may be of United States origin. The source of infection may be international aircrew who were self-isolating in the hotel at the time, however investigations are continuing.”
No further positive cases are linked to the incident. Australian health authorities are seeking to contact potentially infectious aircrew staff.
“As previously reported, the case travelled on a number of train and light rail services between 27 and 30 November, including trains between Minto and Lidcombe and Lidcombe and Central, and light rail between Central and Capitol Square and Central and Convention,” Dr Corbett said.
NSW Health are urging anyone in the Minto and Lidcombe areas to come forward for testing if they have any flu like symptoms.
The total number of cases recorded in NSW since the start of the pandemic is 4416 and 11,593 tests were reported in the past 24 hours.
Victoria has also recorded no new cases and no lives lost from COVID-19 in the past 24 hours.
US BRACING FOR ‘TERRIBLE’ JANUARY
Meanwhile, the US set three shocking coronavirus records, as it recorded the highest daily number of coronavirus deaths, the highest number of new cases, as the number of people admitted to hospital with COVID exceeded 100,000 for the second day in a row.
Some 2,879 people died from coronavirus, according to Johns Hopkins University, while there were 217,664 new cases, as the top infectious disease official, Dr Anthony Fauci, warned “January is going to be terrible”.
Numerous US states have warned that they are running out of intensive care beds, with 100,667 people currently in hospital with the virus.
The soaring figures came as California plans to implement a sweeping stay-at-home order in a desperate attempt to get coronavirus infections under control, and after Joe Biden said he would ask all Americans to wear face masks during his first 100 days in office.
WA TO OPEN BORDER TO VIC, BUT NSW FACES DELAY
Meanwhile, WA Premier Mark McGowan says the state should still be able to reopen to Victoria on Tuesday as planned, but a final decision on NSW will not be revealed until Monday.
Christmas travel plans were thrown into doubt this week after a NSW hotel quarantine worker tested positive for COVID-19, but it so far appears to be a single case rather than a more widespread outbreak.
“It is positive news,” Mr McGowan told reporters on Friday.
“Obviously, there’s testing still to be done. The woman in question — the cleaner — spent a lot of time on trains and trams between western Sydney and her workplace, and by all accounts was a very gregarious person.
“My expectation now is that we will make a final decision on NSW on Monday so that we take every precaution possible.”
But Mr McGowan said he did not think the NSW incident would affect planned changes to WA’s border arrangement with Victoria.
“The latest advice is we don’t think that the NSW outbreak will impede the changes to the borders with Victoria at this point in time,” he said.
“If that were to change over coming days, obviously we’d let people know.”
Mr McGowan said WA could continue to be cautious and careful.
“As you know over the last 12 months, what happens is things change with COVID,” he said.
“In the case of Victoria obviously, in the western suburbs of Melbourne, COVID bubbled away undetected for a considerable period of time and then they had that massive outbreak that caused mass deaths and mass disruption.”
WA last month moved from a hard border to a controlled interstate border with other jurisdictions, except South Australia following its outbreak.
It means people can travel to WA without quarantining for two weeks, but they must complete a G2G Pass and be screened upon arrival.
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