No new local cases; Queensland, New Zealand reopen borders to Victoria
Queensland has revealed it will reopen its border to Victorians, just in time for the school holidays. It comes as no new local cases were recorded in Victoria.
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Queensland will reopen its border to Victoria this week, just in time for the school holidays.
The northern state will lift its border at 1am Friday, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced.
“That is great news for people there,” she said.
“I know there are a lot of people that would have had their holidays booked to Queensland.”
The announcement comes just in time for Victoria’s winter school holidays that are due to begin on Friday.
But the northern state has recorded a new case of community transmission in Brisbane after a leak from hotel quarantine.
And NSW has seen a concerning spike in local transmission, with 10 new cases nearly doubling the amount of cases linked to the Bondi cluster.
There are now 21 cases linked to the growing outbreak.
Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton issued a warning to interstate travellers from NSW orange zones, urging them not to isolate at Victoria’s alpine resorts.
“If you are coming from Sydney on an orange permit to go to an alpine resort, my first piece of advice is to consider non-essential travel if you are coming from that zone,” he said.
“My second piece of advice is not to isolate on the mountain. Please isolate elsewhere and get a negative result before you go there.”
Meanwhile, Victoria has recorded no new local cases of Covid, along with two in hotel quarantine. Testing numbers dipped once again to 13,176.
Just 24 of the state’s 52 active cases are local infections after the outbreak that forced Melbourne into lockdown.
Residents in the Kings Park apartment complex in Southbank remain under quarantine, with health authorities to carry out more testing on Tuesday.
HINT AT RETURN OF FOOTY CROWDS
Prof Sutton hinted that footy crowds could return to Melbourne as early as this weekend.
“It’s a possibility,” he said.
The chief health officer wouldn’t confirm what day restrictions would be eased, but hinted there could be some much-welcome relief for people planning weddings or events in the coming weeks.
“We will make them (announcements) as soon as we can … we will move as far as we possibly can,” he added.
He said there would still “probably” be differences between metropolitan Melbourne and regional Victoria.
Acting Premier James Merlino said he had no announcements to make on restrictions on Tuesday, but would instead reveal more later in the week.
OUR DAMNING VACCINE NUMBERS
A third of elderly Victorians and almost half of over-50s have not been vaccinated, as tensions over supplies come to a head between the states and the federal government.
An emergency national cabinet meeting was held on Monday as state leaders pushed for greater clarity on the expected volumes of doses.
It came in the wake of official advice that Australians aged 50-59 should not be given AstraZeneca, further increasing pressure on stocks of the Pfizer alternative.
For the first time, the federal government told the states how much vaccine they could expect to receive until the end of the year under a best and worst-case scenario, although the projections were not publicly released.
Covid-19 Taskforce Commander Lieutenant-General John Frewen said the nation’s precious Pfizer stockpile had to be carefully managed for at least another month until more doses arrived.
“We are still in a resource-constrained environment,” Mr Frewen said. “But on current forecasts, we are looking forward to ramping up availability of Pfizer through August into September and into October.”
That’s not soon enough, according to Acting Premier James Merlino, who had his strongest swipe at his federal counterparts, pleading for more supply during winter.
Mr Merlino blasted the rollout as a mess, calling on the government to acknowledge it was a “race”.
“That’s the one job of the Commonwealth government – supply of the vaccine. We want to see a sense of urgency.”
Mr Merlino said Victoria couldn’t approach Pfizer directly but added: “If we could, we would do it in a heartbeat.”
The Commonwealth increased the number of doses allocated to Victoria from 71,370 a week in June to 83,070 in July, while an additional 200,000 will be sent to GPs.
An extra 150,000 Pfizer doses are also being sent to Victoria throughout June and early July, amid an outbreak that led to a surge in people wanting to be inoculated.
The state’s Covid-19 boss, Jeroen Weimar, said Victoria was “more than capable” of maintaining that momentum.
“If more Pfizer were to be available to Victoria … We can put them in people’s arms now,” he said.
But only two thirds of Victorians over 70, almost half of those over 50 and about a quarter of people aged over 40 have had their first dose.
Mr Weimar pleaded with vaccine-hesitant Victorians to “engage with the discussion” around getting vaccinated.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who is self-isolating in Canberra, said the country remained on track to offer every eligible person in Australia a first dose by the end of the year.
VICTORIANS WANT JAB TO MARK END OF LOCKDOWNS
Most Victorians want people who are fully vaccinated to be exempt from all or some coronavirus restrictions and for lockdowns to be shelved once the jab has been made available to everyone.
A major poll – commissioned by the Herald Sun – reveals 70 per cent of Victorians support a major rethink on restrictions, with vaccinated Victorians given more freedoms during future outbreaks.
Even more – 75 per cent – back an end to lockdowns and border closures once everyone has had the chance to be vaccinated, regardless of how many actually do.
Read the full exclusive story here.
‘WORLD FIRST’ IN LATEST HOTEL QUARANTINE ESCAPE
Queensland health authorities are investigating whether a quarantine worker transmitted the Covid-19 virus from an infected person staying at Brisbane’s Four Points Hotel to another guest on a different floor.
Contact tracers suspect the worker has acted as an intermediary in spreading the virus from one hotel guest to another inside the quarantine facility “via an object or on themselves”, while not personally becoming infected.
But health sources say investigations are ongoing and it’s too early to definitively say how transmission occurred.
Read the full story here.
NZ TRAVEL BUBBLE TO RESUME
Victorians will again be able to travel internationally without quarantining after New Zealand officials announced the travel bubble would resume.
New Zealand Ministry of Health announced late on Monday night the pause of quarantine free travel from Victoria to New Zealand would be lifted at 11.59pm on Tuesday.
Kiwi public health officials said the Covid-19 risk from Victoria was low and flights between Melbourne and New Zealand destinations could resume.
Travellers will no longer be required to have a pre-departure Covid-19 test.
But Australians who have been at any of the exposure sites in Victoria, NSW, Queensland or the ACT in the last 14 days at the specified times are still not allowed to travel to New Zealand.
New Zealand paused the travel bubble with Victoria on May 25 as Melbourne grappled with another local coronavirus outbreak.
Tasmania also lifted its restrictions on travel from metropolitan Melbourne overnight.
Western Australia and South Australia still have travel restrictions in place with people coming from metropolitan Melbourne.
From 12.01am Friday, Melburnians can travel to South Australia, but need to isolate until they receive a negative test result. Regional Victorians will not be subject to any restrictions in South Australia.
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