Spike in Victoria’s coronavirus figures as crowds hit the beach to enjoy the spring sunshine
Crowds have flocked to Elwood Beach in breach of lockdown rules, with young people drinking and dancing on a day Victoria recorded 176 new Covid cases.
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Hundreds of people descended on Elwood Beach on Thursday after temperatures hit 27 degrees, with many beachgoers maskless and drinking alcohol in breach of lockdown restrictions.
Groups were seen drinking alcohol on the sand, and dancing to music blasting from portable speakers.
Many beachgoers also disregarded other health restrictions, with people spotted on the beach not wearing masks as they soaked up the sun.
Many beachgoers also disregarded other health restrictions, with many spotted on the beach without masks as they soaked up the warm weather.
Others took a late afternoon dip while a fire twirler was seen performing for crowds on the sand.
People were spotted having picnics at the park nearby, while others watched the sunset at Point Ormond Lookout.
There was a very minor police presence at the beach, despite the large crowds.
Two police officers were seen sitting on their vehicle observing the crowds, but did not appear to enforce restrictions.
It was a different story in St Kilda, where police took a harder line against people who were flouting the rules.
One man copped a fine for not wearing a mask as he walked past six officers on the foreshore.
Asked why he wasn’t wearing a mask, the man said he didn’t need to wear one because he was exercising.
But when officers disputed his exercise claim, the man said that he didn’t have his mask because he “left it in the car”.
It comes as Victoria recorded a new spike in coronavirus infections, with 176 cases recorded in the past 24 hours.
Ninety-three of the latest cases are unlinked to existing outbreaks.
The total number of active cases in Victoria is now 1029.
It comes on a day where 48,372 people turned out for testing, while 33,720 vaccine doses were administered.
There are now 61 people in hospital with coronavirus in Victoria, 20 are in intensive care with 13 on a ventilator.
Sixty-seven of the new cases were in the western suburbs, 67 were in the northern suburbs, 22 in east and south of Melbourne, 13 in Shepparton, one in Geelong and three are under investigation.
SURGE IN MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES IN KIDS
Meanwhile, the number of children and adolescents presenting to the Royal Children’s Hospital emergency department has surged between 30 and 80 per cent compared to the previous year, the hospital’s mental health director Ric Haslam said.
Dr Haslam said a range of things were behind this and some young people had few supports and were more vulnerable.
“There’s a sort of a tidal increase of demoralisation and anxiety, of worry, of irritability and frustration,” he said.
“All these things I think we can all sort of experience and recognise.
“We also have to remember that these are very common conditions, particularly in adolescence.”
Chief Psychiatrist Dr Neil Coventry said the suicide rate had not increased in the way authorities predicted. “That doesn’t mean we need to be complacent,” he said.
TESTING RULES TIGHTEN FOR WORKERS
Victoria has tightened its testing obligations for workers travelling in and out of extreme risk zones in New South Wales.
Anyone who is now entering Victoria on a Specified Worker Permit will need to be tested within 72 hours of entering the state, and on days 6,7 or 8 after entry.
Health officials have also flagged that The Specified Worker List will also be reduced.
Those who can currently apply for the permit are people who perform specified work that is: urgent, essential to the operations of their employer or customer, which can’t be done in a timely way by workers already in Victoria.
The changes will come into effect from 6pm tomorrow.
BIG CHANGE TO ASTRAZENECA WAIT TIME
The space between the first and second doses of AstraZeneca jabs in Victoria will be halved from 12 to six weeks.
The revised wait times will be effective immediately.
“This change and the additional supply of the Pfizer vaccine from the Commonwealth when it arrives from Victoria will help us to reach our vaccination targets faster,” Health department official Ben Cowie said.
Although Pfizer bookings are limited right now, there are still more than 52,000 available AstraZeneca appointments in the next two weeks.
Mr Foley said the widespread areas which contain cases are part of a “growing set of concerns” in eastern and southern suburbs.
WA DECLARES VICTORIA ‘HIGH RISK’
Victoria will be declared a “high risk” jurisdiction by Western Australia from Monday – after the state recorded its most coronavirus cases in a year.
Under WA’s “high risk” setting, anyone entering the state must apply for an exemption, have had at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, and have received a negative test 72 hours prior to their departure.
The exemption list is limited to government officials, military personnel, transport and logistics operators, and anyone who is approved by an authorised officer.
Approved travellers will also be subject to a two weeks of self-quarantine at a suitable premises – and be required to get tested on day two and 12 of their stay.
CALL CENTRE, BACKPACKER FEARS
Mr Foley highlighted two locations that emerged overnight as concerning to authorities.
Acquire call centre operations, which runs four sites, is co-located with Health Care Australia.
There are now 17 cases linked to the call centre and through that, about 400 primary close contacts have been identified.
Contact tracing is under way.
The second venue authorities are concerned about is the Base Backpackers in St Kilda, where one case has been identified.
The case has moved to hotel quarantine, but Mr Foley said authorities were working to establish a public health response to ensure residents were properly quarantined.
GRIM PREDICTION FOR IMPENDING PEAK
University of Melbourne epidemiologist Professor Tony Blakely warned Victorian case numbers could hit 2000 a day in October.
“The case numbers are going up at about 5 per cent per day,” Prof Blakely said.
He said if infections continue on this trajectory, Victoria “will probably have 2000 cases a day in late October or early November when the vaccine coverage catches up”.
Melburnians are set to be locked down until the end of October, notching up a dire world record for the number of days spent under harsh stay-at-home laws.
The city will spend its 235th day in lockdown on September 23, when 70 per cent of Victorians are tipped to have had their first jab and restrictions will be eased slightly.
Buenos Aires in Argentina is now out of lockdown, but is the current record holder on 234 days.
Daniel Andrews grimly confirmed on Wednesday lockdown would continue “in some form” until the end of October when the state reaches nationally-agreed vaccination targets to end widespread lockdowns.
In a major shift in Victoria’s pandemic policy, the Premier conceded the goal of the lockdown was no longer to drive case numbers down but to stop them rising rapidly.
The state recorded 120 new infections on Wednesday – the highest daily figure in more than a year – amid warnings more undetected cases were circulating in the community.
“What we are aiming for has changed,” Mr Andrews said. “We were aiming to drive it down and have cases falling. It is now the advice of the experts that is not possible, so now we have to contain the growth of cases and the speed at which they increase.”
He said case numbers would no longer affect restrictions, with the focus now on “buying time” until more people got the jab.
“It is simply not possible to make wholesale changes, to have our ‘freedom day’ … or an opening up day in metropolitan Melbourne in the next few weeks,” he said.
“That is the difficult, but unavoidable position that we find ourselves in. We’ve got to buy time to allow vaccinations to be undertaken.”
When 70 per cent of Victorians aged over 15 have had their first dose – a milestone NSW will hit today, but Victoria won’t reach until about September 23 – the 5km travel limit will expand to 10km and the two-hour daily exercise cap will increase to three.
Construction sites will also increase to 50 per cent worker capacity, if 90 per cent on site have had at least one jab.
But regional Victoria – except Shepparton where there is an outbreak – may come out of lockdown from next week.
The only immediate reprieve for lockdown-weary Victorians is the reopening of playgrounds from Friday, but QR codes must be used and food and drink are banned.
In-home care will also be extended to school-aged children if both parents are essential workers.
Schools in metropolitan Melbourne will remain closed for the remainder of term 3, with a “detailed plan” for term 4 to be unveiled from next week.
“I want to take small steps forward and not have to take a step back,” Mr Andrews said.
Josh Frydenberg said the plan to ease some restrictions at the 70 per cent first dose vaccination target was a “positive step forward”, and backed Victoria’s acknowledgment that “eliminating the Delta variant is an impossibility”.
“No country has done it, and based on the best medical advice we have, we can’t do it,” the federal Treasurer said.
On Thursday, Mr Frydenberg added that he was pleased Mr Andrews had recognised the virus could not be eliminated, but that the Premier needed to provide a “road map out” of lockdowns.
He said restrictions needed to be eased over coming weeks “in a Covid-safe way”.
“It’s enormously critical that people have hope,” the federal Treasurer told 3AW.
“We need to learn to live with the virus.”
He said the federal government would continue to help Victorian businesses deal with the “devastating” impact of the extended lockdown.
Mr Frydenberg also warned the state government should have “no expectation” of ongoing financial aid if it did not open up Victoria once 70 per cent of eligible adults were fully vaccinated.
But the state opposition slammed the road map as yet another “kick in the guts” to law-abiding Victorians.
“This is a betrayal of every Victorian,” Opposition Leader Michael O’Brien said.
“This was supposed to be D-Day. Well D stands for devastation. D stands for despair. Victorians expected some return for their sacrifice. They expected some hope. They want some light at the end of the tunnel, not an oncoming train.”
The state government indicated further financial business support would be provided in coming days.
But Small Business Australia executive director Bill Lang said the emotional and mental health of thousands of small businesses had been “hammered by a government with only one tool in the shed”.
“This is a government of zero account, who have closed parliament, closed debate and refuse to release the heath advice that puts the mental health of adults and children second to their Covid response,” Mr Lang said.
The Ai Group warned many businesses “will not come out of this lockdown intact or at all”.
Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Paul Guerra said his members were pleading for a clear road map but instead got “a plan to have a plan”.
“We are on a Covid-19 treadmill and it’s time we got off,” he said.
Australian Retailers Association chief executive Paul Zahra said while the lockdown extension was “no surprise”, businesses needed to be able to safely reopen once vaccination targets were met.
“Lockdowns are decimating small businesses and are taking significant toll on peoples’ financial, emotional and mental health which is clearly not sustainable,” he said.
Despite the worsening mental health toll caused by heavy restrictions, the Premier admitted Victoria’s chief psychiatrist, Neil Coventry, did not sit in on crisis meetings on Tuesday night.
“Not everybody who helped Brett form his advice was on the call to convey the advice to me and my colleagues … That’d be a rather big Zoom (call),” he said.
Chief health officer Professor Brett Sutton defended the current restrictions as more important than ever.
It comes as Burnett Institute modelling suggested the measures taken over the last month had predicted to have prevented about 6000 cases. “We’ve got a plan to ease restrictions, but we do need to bend the curve,” Prof Sutton said.
NSW HITS NEW GRIM CASE PEAK
New South Wales has recorded 1288 new locally acquired cases of Covid-19, premier Gladys Berejiklian has revealed.
There were seven deaths, Ms Berejiklian added, but ominously she reiterated that October would be even worse for infections and deaths.
REAL CASES DWARF OFFICIAL STATISTICS
Symptomatic Victorians with Covid are failing to come forward for testing, as authorities reveal true infection numbers are likely a third higher than official figures.
Health authorities on Wednesday renewed calls for people to get tested at the first sign of any symptoms, detailing how just 40 per cent of symptomatic people were getting tested.
Chief health officer Brett Sutton said there could be up to a third more cases than official figures show.
“Of course we can’t know what we don’t know, but I think it’s safe to assume that its maybe an additional third (of) true cases that are not yet identified,” Prof Sutton said.
It comes as Victoria recorded its highest daily case number in more than a year, a day after reporting its first fatalities since October 18 last year.
Of Wednesday’s 120 new cases, 64 were linked to known outbreaks, with 56 “mystery” infections under investigation.
Seven of the cases were detected in regional Victoria, including five in Shepparton, one in Seymour and one in Geelong, while 107 were linked to suburbs in Melbourne’s north and west.
The state’s total number of active cases reached 900, with 58 Victorians in hospital with the virus, including 21 in ICU and 14 on ventilators.
SCREAMS BEFORE VICTIM FOUND
Neighbours of a Melbourne woman who died from the coronavirus in her northern suburbs home say they are “gutted” about the suburban tragedy.
Authorities have confirmed the Covid victim, aged 49, died in her Northcote home on Tuesday.
Her death was the first recorded Covid fatality recorded in Victoria in 2021.
Northcote resident Sandy Young, who lives across the road from the family, said locals called triple-0 about 2am on Tuesday following frantic screams.
Read the full story.
REPRIEVE FOR PLAYGROUNDS
Playgrounds with QR codes will reopen to children under 12 tomorrow – but parents have been told they must obey coronavirus precautions.
Chief health officer Brett Sutton on Wednesday announced young families would get a reprieve from the controversial closures, put in place when restrictions were ramped up mid-last month. But stricter rules will be put in place, with outdoor playgrounds only opened to children aged under 12.
They can be supervised by just one parent or carer, who will be required to check in through QR codes and cannot take their mask off to eat or drink.
The move comes after the Herald Sun on Tuesday that revealed medical experts believed they were unlikely places for coronavirus transmission and could be reopened safely.
Prof Sutton used one “potential” case of transmission between two children at a playground as partial justification for introducing the ban.
But on Wednesday he said his advice to shut playgrounds had come because adults were using it as a loophole to meet across households. He said authorities had “suspicions about transmissions maybe occurring in playgrounds”.
MANY LOSE SPORTING CHANCE
Community sports are reeling, with many seasons on a knife-edge or cancelled.
Time is running out for both indoor and outdoor adult and junior sports such as basketball, soccer, gymnastics and netball to resume before the end of the season, with the current restrictions to run until at least September 23.
Sporting associations broke the news to members online on Wednesday.
Basketball Victoria chief Nick Honey announced its VJBL, Big V and NBL1 South seasons were being cancelled, with under-12 skills days and camps postponed.
Football Victoria said a decision would be made on the rest of the soccer season as soon as possible.
Gymnastics Victoria implored members to get the jab, as the only way out of lockdown.
Netball Victoria took to Twitter to encourage their members to reach out to teammates. “First and foremost check in on your teammates and those that you’re missing seeing on and around the court,” the tweet read.
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