Coronavirus updates as it happened: Victoria supports McGowan’s call to stop people leaving Australia for non-urgent reasons

Thanks so much for following along today. Before I head off here is a look at some of the developments from the day.

• Perth will finish their lockdown tonight as planned, with no new community cases detected in WA today. Restrictions will remain in place for another four days. 
• A ban on all flights from India could be put in place within days under a suite of options the Australian government is considering in response to the country’s worsening COVID-19 outbreak.
• More Aussie stars flee India in the face of dire COVID-19 situation

Please have a lovely evening and check back in with us early tomorrow morning as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact communities around the globe.

Acting Victorian Premier James Merlino says states should be able to set their international passenger intake to any limit they determine they can safely and reasonably manage.

“Given the increasing risks posed in so many countries and the delayed rollout of the vaccine here in Australia, it is neither safe or logical to allow thousands of people to leave every month for a wide range of reasons including attending weddings,” he said.

“Australian’s international borders are currently closed for good reason - until it is safe to open them again, people should only be leaving the country for genuinely urgent or compassionate reasons.”

Victoria would support these processes being reviewed and tightened.

“We have been clear that hyper-infectious, fast moving strains of coronavirus mean we need to consider alternative models to existing hotel quarantine - we would welcome increased involvement from the Commonwealth,” Mr Merlino said.

There were 14 new cases of COVID-19 detected in South Australia on Monday.

All acquired their infection overseas and have been in a medi-hotel since their arrival.

State authorities reminded anyone who had travelled to South Australia from the Perth or Peel regions since April 17 they must get tested for COVID-19 and isolate until they receive a negative result.

People who have been in Perth or the Peel region are not permitted to enter South Australia. Essential travellers must isolate for 14 days.

That’s it from me for now, I’m handing back to Daile Cross from WA Today.

Thanks very much for reading.

WA Premier Mark McGowan has indicated snap lockdowns could become the norm in WA when coronavirus cases are detected in the community, as Perth prepares to emerge from its second lockdown in three months on Monday night.

He said adopting a different approach was “a recipe for people dying”.

“We have a far more cautious, far more precautionary approach here and it’s worked,” he said. “We’ll follow the health advice and we’ll be cautious and that will continue.”

His comments follow Perth’s first snap lockdown in January ordering more than two million people to stay home for five days after a security guard became infected at work. No further cases were detected.

During the latest three-day lockdown, one further case was detected in the community in a close contact who was already required to quarantine for 14 days after attending a cafe at the same time as an infected person.

Mr McGowan and WA’s chief health officer Andy Robertson said WA was not out of the woods yet as it was possible there were undetected cases still in the community from the Mercure hotel cluster.

Here’s some more of what WA Premier Mark McGowan had to say in favour of tightening international borders and using Commonwealth facilities for quarantine from WA Today’s Fran Rimrod:

“We are in a pandemic … millions of people are dying,” he said. “If you can’t go to a funeral you can’t go to a wedding or you can’t go and run in an athletics meet, so be it.

“I’d just urge the Commonwealth to stop letting people leave this country to go to weddings or other things overseas.”

He again pushed for greater federal involvement in quarantine using facilities such as disused air force bases.

“The Commonwealth does have facilities that were built for these sorts of reasons … I know the Commonwealth doesn’t want to do it and I’ve heard all the arguments but basically they don’t want to do it because it is risk. It is risk for them ... I think they should be honest about it,” he said.

“But if they are not prepared to do it we will just have to drop the number of returning people into Australia and that will be sad for many families but we can’t go through these sorts of events, so we will drop the number [of returning residents].”

A ban on all flights from India could be put in place within days under a suite of options the Australian government is considering in response to the country’s worsening COVID-19 outbreak.

The National Security Committee of Cabinet will on Tuesday discuss temporarily halting all repatriation flights out of India, which would prevent thousands of Australians – including cricketers in the Indian Premier League – from getting home.

Australia will also likely send oxygen, ventilators and personal protective equipment to India as part of an immediate support package to be announced on Tuesday. It will not send vaccines because of its own supply issues and the fact that India has ramped up domestic manufacturing of vaccines.

The country added 352,991 cases alone in the past 24 hours, with 2812 deaths, but there are fears the death toll could be much higher with limited data being kept at mass outdoor crematoriums. Priyanka Kishore, an India analyst at Oxford Economics said “deaths are now doubling every ten days”, as opposed to an average of 29 days in the first wave, and this figure was still likely to be buttressed by delayed or under-reporting of deaths.

Foreign Minister Marise Payne, Australia’s ambassador to India, Barry O’Farrell, and officials from the Health Department, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Department of Home Affairs have been locked in discussions over recent days on how to deal with the crisis.

Read the full story here.

The second wave of COVID-19 has hit India hard. With daily new infection rates of more than 300,000, hospitals are completely overrun, the country’s oxygen supply is in peril and there are fears the real death toll is much greater than reported.

The situation has sparked debate - as we’ve just seen with WA Premier Mark McGowan’s comments - in Australia about whether travel rules need to be tightened with India.

On today’s episode of our Please Explain podcast, Tory Maguire speaks to world editor Michelle Griffin about the devastating impact of this second wave for India, and the far-reaching consequences for the reopening of the Asia-Pacific region and the rest of the world.

About half an hour ago we reported on the blog that more Australian cricketers in India for the IPL are looking to come home in a hurry as the coronavirus situation worsens in that country.

WA Premier Mark McGowan says that sort of travel would not meet his definition of “essential”.

“I don’t manage the queue. That is managed by airlines, by the Commonwealth, that is a matter for them as to how the queue is managed.

“All I’d say is, going to India to play cricket at this point in time is not essential. It is not essential.

“What also happens is, you know, the people who do that, even if they are COVID free, they get on an aircraft and often have COVID positive people on them.

“It is just not essential. It is not necessary. While we have low rates of vaccination, while the virus is rampant throughout the world, particularly in some countries. We shouldn’t send people over there.”

Mr McGowan repeated his concerns that too many Australians were obtaining permits to travel overseas and called on the federal government to tighten the rules.

“I’d just urge the Commonwealth to stop letting people leave this country to go to weddings or other things overseas,” he said.

“People are going overseas, just so you know. I’ve had multiple occasions of this reported to me, people going overseas to play in sporting events, they have been leaving here to go and study, they have been going to funerals and they have been going to weddings.

“Now, they are not essential. You can study here, you can get married he has here are missing funerals. They are non-essential and we need to stop this sort of international travel for the sorts of purposes.”