As it happened: TGA provisionally approves Pfizer vaccine as Victoria records no new local COVID-19 cases

Health Minister Greg Hunt has announced a 72-hour suspension of New Zealand’s green zone travel status in the wake of a case of community transmission in Auckland.

A woman is believed to have acquired the South African variant of coronavirus while in hotel quarantine, but didn’t test positive until she was released.

Acting Chief Medical Officer Professor Michael Kidd has urged anyone who arrived in Australia from New Zealand since January 14 to stay in isolation until they get tested for COVID-19 and receive a negative result.

The Australian Health Protection Principal Committee recommended to the federal government to take a “precautionary approach” to the green zone travel bubble arrangements in place, said Professor Kidd.

“A few days after leaving hotel quarantine a specimen [from the woman] was tested last Friday, January the 22nd, and returned a positive COVID-19 test result on Saturday, January 23,” Professor Kidd said.

“The person had visited at least 30 locations, and these are all detailed on the New Zealand Ministry of Health website today following gene sequencing in New Zealand.”

New Zealand health authorities believe the strain detected was from South Africa.

“This will be done out of an abundance of caution,” Mr Hunt said.

The government has recommended that all passengers from New Zealand with green zone travel plans scheduled in the next 72 hours “reconsider their need to travel”.

So we’ll sign off for the second time today, after news that New Zealand’s green zone travel status is being suspended for 72 hours.

Exactly one year since the first COVID-19 case was confirmed in Australia, health authorities have urged anyone who has arrived from across the Tasman since January 14 to isolate and get a test.

Apart from that, here’s what else happened today:

• The Therapeutic Goods Administration has granted provisional approval for the Pfizer vaccine to be administered to Australians. Prime Minister Scott Morrison said up to 80,000 vaccine doses would be administered each week starting in late February.
• Neither Victoria, NSW nor Queensland recorded any new locally acquired coronavirus cases on Monday.
• Six new COVID-19 cases among returned travellers in hotel quarantine were confirmed in Victoria on Monday, none of them in people connected with the Australian Open. There were three new returned traveller cases in NSW and two in Queensland.
• New Zealand’s first local case of COVID-19 for more than two months is a woman who has been infected with the highly transmissible South African variant and probably contracted the virus while in hotel quarantine, the country’s COVID response minister has said.
• Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has tested positive for COVID-19.
• It is exactly one year since the first coronavirus case was confirmed in Australia, a man in his 50s who tested positive for the virus in Melbourne after arriving from China.

Craig Butt will be back on the blog from 7am tomorrow.

Queensland has issued an urgent public health alert instructing anyone who has come into the state from New Zealand since January 14 to get tested and quarantine until they get their result.

A woman in Auckland is believed to have acquired the South African variant of coronavirus while in hotel quarantine and didn’t test positive until she was released. It has triggered a 72-hour suspension of the green zone travel status between Australia and New Zealand.

On Monday afternoon, Queensland Health issued the public health alert for all travellers from New Zealand, including green corridor flights.

“The woman has since visited a number of locations in New Zealand. The woman is confirmed to have the South African variant of COVID-19, which is more contagious than previous variants,” Queensland Health said.

“We are urging anyone who has returned from New Zealand to get tested immediately, even if you do not have symptoms and to quarantine until you receive a negative result. Contact tracing is currently underway by New Zealand Health authorities.”

We did say we’re going to start wrapping up the blog, but we just got word that Health Minister Greg Hunt and Acting Chief Medical Officer Professor Michael Kidd are due to hold a press conference at 4.15pm AEDT, so we’ll bring you that live-stream first.

That’s all from me on the blog today.

Thanks for tuning in on for what has been a doubly significant day – exactly one year since the first confirmed COVID-19 case in Australia, and the day that the Pfizer vaccine was granted provisional approval by Australia’s medical watchdog.

Here is a quick recap of the key news in the blog today:

• The Therapeutic Goods Administration has granted provisional approval for the Pfizer vaccine to be administered to Australians. Prime Minister Scott Morrison said up to 80,000 vaccine doses would be administered each week starting in late February.
• Neither Victoria, NSW nor Queensland recorded any new locally acquired coronavirus cases on Monday.
• Six new COVID-19 cases among returned travellers in hotel quarantine were confirmed in Victoria on Monday, none of them in people connected with the Australian Open. There were three new returned traveller cases in NSW and two in Queensland.
• New Zealand’s first local case of COVID-19 for more than two months is a woman who has been infected with the highly transmissible South African variant and probably contracted the virus while in hotel quarantine, the country’s COVID response minister has said.
• Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has tested positive for COVID-19.
• It is exactly one year since the first coronavirus case was confirmed in Australia, a man in his 50s who tested positive for the virus in Melbourne after arriving from China.

I’ll be back on the blog from 7am tomorrow.

The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention is stepping up its efforts to track coronavirus mutations to ensure that COVID-19 vaccines and treatments stay ahead of new variants of the disease until collective immunity is achieved, the CDC chief said on Sunday (US time).

Rochelle Walensky spoke about implications posed by the rapidly evolving virus during a Fox News interview as the number of Americans known to have been infected neared 25 million, with more than 417,000 dead, just over a year after the first US case of COVID-19 was documented.

Vaccination has become ever more critical with the recent emergence of several coronavirus variants believed to be more transmissible, and in the case of one strain first detected in Britain, possibly more lethal.

“We are now scaling up both our surveillance of these and our study of these,” Dr Walensky said, adding that the CDC was collaborating with the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration and even the Pentagon.

The object, she said, is to monitor “the impact of these variants on vaccines, as well as on our therapeutics,” as the virus continues to mutate while it spreads.

Until vaccines can provide herd immunity in the population, mask wearing and social distancing remain vital to “decrease the amount of virus that is circulating, and therefore, decrease the amount of variants that are out there,” Dr Walensky said.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Sunday (local time) he had tested positive for COVID-19, amid an intense second wave of the coronavirus pandemic that has pushed the health system of the country’s vast capital city close to saturation.

The 67-year-old President said in a tweet that his symptoms were light and he was receiving medical treatment.

“As always, I am optimistic,” said Lopez Obrador, who has resisted wearing a face mask.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.Credit: AP

Mr Obrador has been criticised for his handling of the pandemic, with a strategy focused on increasing hospital capacity over testing and contact tracing. The country has shied away from mandatory lockdowns, instead opting for a tiered system of restrictions to limit the impact on the economy.

The health ministry on Sunday reported 10,872 new confirmed coronavirus cases and 530 fatalities, bringing its totals to 1,763,219 infections and 149,614 deaths, the fourth-highest death toll worldwide.

Reuters

Israel has expanded its COVID-19 vaccination drive on Sunday to include 16- to 18-year-olds, in what its government described as an effort to enable their attendance at school exams.

Israel currently has among the highest vaccination rates in the world for COVID-19.

This post has nothing to do with coronavirus, but has some news that people in Melbourne will no doubt appreciate: it looks like the cool change has hit.

The temperature dropped from 38.6 degrees at 1pm to 27.3 degrees at 1.30pm.

Obligatory graph:

A woman who contracted New Zealand’s first local case of COVID-19 for more than two months is infected with the highly transmissible South African variant and likely contracted the virus within hotel isolation, health authorities say.

No other community cases have yet been detected, the country’s Director-General of Health, Ashley Bloomfield, said on Monday.

The source of the virus is believed to be another arrival who was isolating in a nearby room before they tested positive on day three of their quarantine and were transferred to a separate facility. The overlap happened on the woman’s second to last day in isolation.

New Zealand Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield.Credit: Getty Images

The woman, 56, had twice tested negative to the virus, on day three and day 12 of quarantine, before being released into the community on January 13. Within days of returning home, her muscles started to ache, but did not experience respiratory symptoms such as coughing or sneezing.

She tested positive to the virus about a week later, on January 23.

Two close contacts of the woman, her husband and a hairdresser, have tested negative, but tests on 13 other close contacts – all retail workers – are pending.

Stuff with staff reporters

Read more: New Zealand’s first community COVID case in months ‘spread in quarantine’