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That’s all for our COVID-19 blog today - thanks for tuning in.
The blog will be back tomorrow morning, with Mathew Dunckley hopping into the blogging chair from about 7am to keep track of all the latest updates.
There are probably a lot of Melburnians at the moment who are wondering what to do this weekend, so I’ll leave you with some of our culture team’s suggestions on what to watch on the streaming platforms.
Read the article here.
Federal funding could flow to more states and territories to expand the nation’s quarantine capacity in a bid to copy a Victorian plan to build a village-style centre with hundreds of rooms near Melbourne.
The federal government is looking for similar projects in other locations on the key condition they add to hotel quarantine rather than trying to replace the existing system.
Health Minister Greg Hunt said the government was “looking for partnerships” with states and territories on quarantine facilities.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
Health Minister Greg Hunt stepped up federal support for the Victorian proposal on Friday by saying it was “far and away the most advanced” from states and territories.
Mr Hunt said the government was “looking for partnerships” with other states and territories after the expansion of the Howard Springs facility near Darwin, which is expected to reach a capacity of 2000 beds within a week.
But a Queensland proposal for a quarantine camp near Toowoomba remains off the federal agenda despite a visit to Canberra by its chief proponent, John Wagner, in a bid to overcome objections.
Australia notched up a record day for vaccinations on Thursday, with 124,871 doses administered throughout the country.
This is the most doses administered in a single day since we started getting daily updates on the rollout progress early last month.
Victoria, NSW and Queensland all recorded the highest single-day totals yesterday.
Using this new interactive table, you can see how daily dose numbers have tracked in your state or territory. By default it shows a progress bar, but click one of the arrows for each state/territory and it will extend out into a graph. To bring up the daily totals, click the ‘daily’ button.
You will notice that there are typically five days in a row of high dose numbers followed by two days of very low numbers – that is because the high days are weekdays and the low days are weekends.
Some states, such as Queensland, show a single-day surge on April 18 that exceeds any day since - this is because of delayed dose data being added to the state’s tally, not because there was a stampede to get vaccinated on that day.
These changes have also been pushed through to our vaccine tracker data centre, which compiles worldwide data on countries’ vaccine rollouts.
Victoria has broken its record for the most vaccine doses administered in a single day.
Health department data shows there were 41,389 doses administered on Thursday, breaking the previous record by more than 10,000.
And it isn’t just Victorians who are fronting up at GPs and vaccine hubs – NSW and Queensland also recorded record single-day dose numbers yesterday.
In NSW there were 37,570 doses administered and in Queensland 21,669.
A COVID-19 positive case attended the Preston City Hall community immunisation session last Saturday, Darebin City Council chief executive Sue Wilkinson has said.
“We have a thorough record of everyone who was in attendance and have contacted those who were there, including our staff,” she said.
She said the council was notified that the person attended a community immunisation session at Preston City Hall on Saturday, May 22, between 9.30am and 11am.
It is understood the session was for flu vaccinations.
The council would not reveal how many people were told to isolate from Preston City Hall exposure site.
Health Minister Greg Hunt has been asked whether a lottery for people who get vaccinated for COVID-19 is being considered as an incentive for people.
It comes as the state of Ohio in the United States that awarded $1 million to the winner of a vaccination lottery it ran.
Mr Hunt replied that the strongest reason to get vaccinated was to “avoid the lottery of COVID”.
Referring to deaths from the virus, he said “too many numbers have come up” worldwide.
Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly has been asked at a press conference whether any of the people who contracted COVID-19 locally in Victoria had been vaccinated.
As of yesterday, there were 26 people in Victoria who had contracted the virus from local transmission.
Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly said 21 of those 26 people had been asked whether they had been vaccinated against COVID-19, and all 21 had replied that they had not yet received a vaccine dose.
A record single-day number of 124,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses were administered in Australia over the past 24 hours, the nation’s rollout co-ordinator has said.
Commodore Eric Young of the Vaccine Operations Centre said Australia had reached more than four million doses.
“It took us 47 days to get to our first million and only 13 to get to our latest million,” he said.
A total of 160 defence force personnel will be sent to Victoria to assist authorities with lockdown enforcement and contact tracing, Health Minister Greg Hunt has announced.
He said the personnel would help “to contain the outbreak and to protect Victorians”.
Mr Hunt said there was “real cause for hope” based on the low case numbers announced in Victoria on Friday, the strong contact tracing system set up and the high COVID testing numbers.
He said the state’s current situation was different to a year ago due to better contact tracing infrastructure, the fact Victoria’s state government had moved quickly to impose a lockdown once case numbers started to rise and that the fact a COVID-19 vaccine was being rolled out .
Health Minister Greg Hunt, Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly and Commodore Eric Young of the Vaccine Operations Centre are due to give a coronavirus update at 3pm.
You can watch the press conference live below: