Daniel Andrews to return from holiday for emergency national cabinet meeting

The Victorian Premier will return from holidays to address an urgent issue.

Daniel Andrews will return from his summer holiday to attend Wednesday’s national cabinet as state leaders scramble to tackle the Omicron variant.

The Premier has been on leave for more than a week and is set to join Prime Minister Scott Morrison to discuss booster shots and restrictions.

Following the meeting, which will be attended by all state and territory leaders, James Merlino will return to his role as Acting Premier.

Mr Andrews has been receiving regular updates on the new variant during his leave, with 37 cases already confirmed in Victoria.

Premier Daniel Andrews will attend national cabinet on Wednesday. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Crosling

Also on the agenda will be Doherty Institute modelling showing Australia could record 200,000 cases a day by the end of January.

The modelling, which assumes Omicron is as severe as the Delta variant, also projects 4000 hospitalisations a day next month in a worst-case scenario.

However, it predicted the wave would become under control by March with the help of mass booster shots.

The Prime Minister called for calm on Wednesday morning, slapping down the prediction, adding a hard suppression or elimination strategy is “nonsense”.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison with Annastacia Palaszczuk and Daniel Andrews at national cabinet in December 2020.

“Omicron is in Australia, the idea that you’re going to suppress it any extreme level, or you’re going to eliminate it, that’s nonsense, that’s not going to happen,” he told Sunrise.

“I just want to assure people the modelling that has been reported is a very unlikely extreme case scenario that assumes that nobody does anything, nobody gets boosters, there are no changes that take place, that no one exercises common sense.”

It comes after several states broke daily case tally records with New South Wales and South Australia recording 3057 and 154 new cases respectively on Tuesday.

Victoria tallied 1254 new infections while Queensland recorded 86, the ACT had 16, Tasmania four and the Northern Territory 14.

Originally published as Daniel Andrews to return from holiday for emergency national cabinet meeting