As it happened: Australia secures 10 million more doses of Pfizer vaccine as Melbourne returns to harsher restrictions; WA lockdown continues

Thank you all for joining us for another day on our COVID-19 blog. David here closing the blog.

The stories that dominated headlines today:

• Australia has secured an additional 10 million doses of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine, taking the nation’s total vaccine supply to 150 million doses in a bid to also cover other countries in the Pacific.
• The only Australian Open player to have so far returned a positive COVID-19 test in Melbourne has been released from hotel quarantine just days before the event is due to begin.
• The Victorian state government has announced a number of new statewide restrictions after a hotel quarantine worker tested positive for coronavirus. The case - a 26-year-old man who last worked at the Grand Hyatt on January 29 - brings an end to the state’s 28-day run of zero community transmission.
• Do much on the weekend? In the small talk hall of fame, one question sits above all else, beloved by hairdressers, baristas and awkward colleagues everywhere. It certainly wasn’t a quiet weekend on the couch for the hotel quarantine worker whose positive test result broke Victoria’s four-week run without community transmission of COVID-19.
• Plans to get 75 per cent of workers back in Melbourne offices are in disarray after the staggered return to work was rocked by a single case of COVID-19 case in a hotel quarantine worker.
• Queensland has no plans to close its border to Victoria, but has advised residents not to travel to greater Melbourne after a hotel quarantine worker in the city tested positive for COVID-19, sending hundreds of Australian Open players and staff into isolation.
• Amid questions of how Western Australia could have escaped further community spread, an infectious disease expert has dispelled suggestions the security guard dubbed Case 903 might have been a false positive.
• The AFL has been forced to change three round-two matches in the AFLW thanks to border restrictions due to positive COVID-19 cases. The fixture has been upended, with the two Western Australian teams, Fremantle and West Coast, still uncertain when they will play next.
• In Rome, the former European bank chief Mario Draghi agreed Wednesday (Thursday AEDT) to try to form a non-political government to steer Italy through the coronavirus pandemic after last-ditch negotiations among political parties failed to produce a viable governing coalition.
• In Dublin, Ireland does not currently plan to give the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca to people over the age of 65, the country’s health service said on Wednesday.

• In London, Britain has given 10 million people the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said on Wednesday. “This is a hugely significant milestone in our national effort against this virus,” he said on Twitter.

Join us again tomorrow morning as our coronavirus blog continues to bring our readers free news throughout the pandemic.

Night.

People in the central Queensland coastal town of Yeppoon are being urged to get tested for COVID-19 after the state’s sewage surveillance program found traces of the virus in a treatment plant.

Queensland Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young said continued detections across the state were becoming more concerning.

Yeppoon residents have been warned to get tested. Credit: Darrian Traynor

“This is especially important now more than ever. As we know, the new variants emerging overseas are more contagious than previous variants we have seen in Queensland,” she said.

“If there is a case we are not yet aware of, it is critical we detect it through our testing mechanisms as quickly as possible to contain any potential spread.”

The catchment, near Rockhampton, takes in sewage from the suburbs of Taroomball, Inverness, Hidden Valley, Rosslyn, Mulambin, Cooee Bay, Barlows Hill, Lammermoor, Meikleville Hill, Pacific Heights, Taranganba and Yeppoon.

“It is, of course, also possible that this detection relates to previous COVID-19 cases who can shed viral fragments for a couple of months after they are no longer infectious,” Dr Young said.

While Queensland added no new cases to its COVID tally on Thursday, “three cases of interest” are now under investigation.

Dr Young believes one of the cases, a woman in north Brisbane, had returned a false positive test.

Read the full story here.

Leading jockeys and trainers who attended a racing function on Monday will be barred from race meetings until further notice because one of the guests had attended a COVID-19 hotspot the day before.

Attendees at Monday’s Victorian Racing Media Association’s annual luncheon, including Jye McNeil, Damien Oliver, Ciaron Maher, Denis Pagan and Robbie Griffiths, were told on Thursday they would not be able to attend the meeting at Pakenham that night and had been stood down until the guest in question has returned a negative result for COVID-19.

“The attendee, who is showing no symptoms of COVID-19 and is otherwise feeling well, has been tested today and is currently awaiting a result of that test,” the VRMA wrote to members on Thursday.

Cup-winning jockey Jye McNeil is one of the key racing figures sidelined pending a single COVID-19 test result.Credit: Getty Images

“Under government directives they will be required to remain isolated for 14 days.

“In an abundance of caution, Racing Victoria is asking all attendees at the luncheon not to attend a licensed racing premises until further advice.

“We are advised that they have contacted licensed participants and some employers directly and will communicate with other accredited media ahead of Saturday’s meeting at Caulfield.”

Racing Victoria chief steward Robert Cram has also been stood down until further notice after attending the luncheon, while any journalists who attended are also prohibited from working at any licensed racing venues.

Read Damien’s full article here.

Epidemiologists have warned that COVID-19 will continue to leak out of quarantine unless more is urgently done to address the threat of aerosol transmission, after a hotel worker’s positive test forced Victoria to take a step back to mask-wearing and gathering limits.

The scientists’ warning comes after the 26-year-old, who had been serving as a resident support officer in the Australian Open quarantine program, tested positive and another returned traveller was suspected of being infected with a highly infectious strain of COVID-19 after viral particles spread from another guest’s hotel room.

The hotel quarantine worker last worked at the Grand Hyatt on January 29 and was tested at the end of their shift, returning a negative result. He tested positive on February 2.Credit: Paul Jeffers

Both cases are under investigation by the state’s public health team.

Premier Daniel Andrews said aerosol transmission – where the virus is spread by droplets in the air – could not be ruled out. “That is challenging – very, very challenging,” he said on Thursday.

Professor Mike Toole, an epidemiologist at the Burnet Institute, said Australia should prepare for “more groundhog days” unless health authorities did more to prevent the aerosol transmission.

“We’ve had outbreaks in hotel quarantine in every capital city on the mainland since November,” he said.

Read the full story here.

A plan for coming out of the five-day lockdown in Western Australia will be announced on Thursday night or Friday morning depending on whether any more cases of COVID-19 are recorded in the community.

Free travel between Western Australian and Victoria is also off the cards after a hotel quarantine worker tested positive to COVID-19 in the eastern state.

WA Premier Mark McGowan will announce a post-lockdown plan on Thursday night or Friday morning.Credit: Getty

Premier Mark McGowan will convene a State Disaster Council meeting on Thursday afternoon to finalise a plan for a gradual step-down for the Perth, Peel and South West regions after 6pm on Friday.

The state has gone four days without a community case of COVID-19.

Mr McGowan said he expected schools to go back on Monday, pending no further infections, but could not outline what restrictions would be in place even if there were no more COVID-19 cases on Thursday or Friday.

“We put in place lots of plans, we worked very quickly from Sunday through to now ... whilst also dealing with one of the worst bushfires we’ve seen in many years,” he said.

“But we’re still awaiting the latest test results, we’re still doing thousands of tests and that’s why we’ll make those announcements once we get those test results in.

“We do have a plan and obviously there’s a whole range of people working on it as we speak.”

Read the full story here.

Professor Tony Blakely is an epidemiologist at the University of Melbourne.

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On Wednesday two independent new SARS-CoV-2 infections occurred in Melbourne. Both curious in their own ways.

Victoria’s health department has surged up to full steam again – very impressively. Some of our liberties that we were about to enjoy are on hold, and some of our newly acquired liberties are temporarily lost. Masks back on.

People associated with the Australian Open are seen lining up at a testing facility Credit: Getty

No need for panic. This is COVID-normal for 2021: When a city tries to keep some sense of normality and fun by hosting tennis tournaments and bringing citizens back.

What is the detective game we are playing here in the next few days? And what are the likely lessons?

Case one is a 26-year-old man unwittingly infected, who just so happens to have been working at the Grand Hyatt – the hotel where most of the Australian Open tennis players and staff are staying. Whoops.

What do we know? He last worked at the Hyatt on January 29. Tested negative at end of his shift. Developed symptoms, then tested positive.

How did he get infected? Two options. First, from somebody staying at the Hyatt. While this is probably the conclusion most people jumped to (myself included), the last known infection among an international arrival at the Hyatt was on January 22 – and they were promptly shipped off to a health hotel.

It is possible the 26-year-old picked up the infection directly from a tennis player or official up to and including January 29 and took over a week to become test positive (i.e. to start shedding the virus). Possible, but not likely.

Read the full opinion piece here.

Plans to get 75 per cent of workers back in the office are in disarray after the staggered return to work was rocked by a single case of COVID-19 case in a hotel quarantine worker.

A day after announcing that the return to work would be accelerated, allowing three-quarters of office workers to get back to their desks from next Monday, Premier Daniel Andrews threw out the plans at a late-night press conference on Wednesday.

Return-to-work plans are up in the air.Credit: Getty

Instead, current caps allowing 50 per cent of private sector employees and 25 per cent of public servants in the workplace would remain in place.

Those restrictions came into effect on January 18, having been delayed a week by the Black Rock cluster.

The dashed plans will be a blow to retail and hospitality businesses in the CBD that have been starved of customers without office workers or international tourists.

Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Paul Guerra said the government’s response was appropriate but it was obviously disappointing to delay the staggered return to work.

“Nobody wants to see a third wave and we certainly don’t want to see the state shut down across the board,” Mr Guerra said.

But he hoped, depending on the test results of close contacts, that the delays would only be short-lived.

Read the full article here.

Opposition health spokesman Mark Butler says the Morrison government needs to take responsibility for hotel quarantine, after a case in a hotel quarantine worker was confirmed in Melbourne on Wednesday night.

“What we’ve seen over the last three months is outbreaks from hotel quarantine in our five major cities that have caused extraordinary disruption,” he told ABC’s Patricia Kervalis on Thursday afternoon.

Mark Butler.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

“You have Perth in a week-long lockdown, Adelaide has experienced that, Brisbane has experienced that, Melbourne is going through its processes today to put in place restrictions on the Victorian community because of this outbreak.

“There is no question that outbreaks from hotel quarantine are the most serious failing we have right now in our COVID response, and responsibility for that failing, constitutional, legal responsibility, rests with Scott Morrison.”

The Prime Minister said earlier on Thursday the government was open to considering proposals for further quarantine facilities similar to the Howard Springs quarantine centre in the Northern Territory.

“The Toowoomba option we’re looking at as a supplementary capacity, and writing back to the Queensland Premier today about that,” he said.

“But this idea that you can replace the hotel quarantine system, bring Australians back home, manage your health agenda effectively through some other mechanism, I think we have to keep a sense of realism about this and a sense of proportion.”

Western Australia opted for harsher lockdown measures than Victoria following its hotel quarantine coronavirus case because it was more vulnerable, according to Premier Mark McGowan.

Following the positive test result of a hotel quarantine security guard on Sunday about 2 million people in the Perth, Peel and South West areas of the state were plunged into a five day lockdown and required to wear masks for the first time since the pandemic hit Australia to stop any potential spread of the virus.

WA Premier Mark McGowan.Credit: Hamish Hastie.

However, following revelations Victoria had its own case of transmission in a quarantine hotel Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews announced a ‘third ring’ contact tracing strategy without shutting the city down.

Mr McGowan said WA’s vulnerability to uncontrollable transmission was much greater than Victoria, which still had some restrictions in place from its outbreaks last year.

“We were more vulnerable than anywhere else, simply because we were freer more relaxed, more open community,” he said.

“We hadn’t had any COVID for 10 months which was virtually a world record so therefore we had to take stronger action.

“They’ve already had rules in place that have been in place for a long period of time, which are much, much stronger than restrictions than Western Australia had in place.”

Western Australia will also look to beef up its hotel quarantine system under a range of measures including mandatory use of goggles by hotel staff.

The state will consider a Victorian proposal to conduct saliva testing of workers between shifts by next week following fierce criticism from the Australian Medical Association WA over policies that did not require hotel quarantine security guards to wear masks.

It was unclear how this regime would differ from the daily saliva testing regime introduced in the state last Friday.

Health Minister Roger Cook said every state was reassessing their quarantine hotel protocols and the matter of PPE and more testing was being discussed at the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee meeting today.

“As part of our continuous improvement process today all hotel quarantine workers in high risk areas in addition to wearing obviously wearing masks will also be required to have eye protection equipment,” he said.

“Other measures we’re looking to introduce shortly is to have hotel quarantine workers have a saliva test between shifts. This is a proposal put up by the by the Victorian government we agree with it.”

Opposition health spokesman Mark Butler says Australians deserve more detail about how many vaccines Australia will receive and when, so people and medical professionals can prepare.

“It’s not just me asking these questions, it’s patient groups, GP groups that are still not clear about how they are going to manage this extraordinary logistical challenge we have, of probably 50 to 60 million vaccinations over the course of the next six or seven months, if you take account of the COVID vaccine as well as the flu vaccine,” he said.

Mark Butler.Credit: SMH

Earlier today, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said there were some issues outside the government’s control.

“Of course, there are some uncertainties that are obviously there regarding supplies, particularly from overseas,” he said.

But Mr Butler said there was more detail the government should be providing.

“There’s no detail around the online booking system that Greg Hunt has said will be the single entry point for people to make arrangements to receive the vaccine, presumably, if they’re not living in residential aged care facilities,” he said.

“We’re into February already, and we need to start to get this detail from the government.”

In response to questions about the online booking portal earlier this week, a Health Department spokesperson said the government was working with software industry bodies “to ensure sector readiness and explore opportunities for industry to support the vaccination rollout”.