Selfish call on grim Covid day

On Australia’s deadliest day of the coronavirus pandemic so far, it was a selfish, unconscionable call by a group supposedly dedicated to improving human rights and the lives of black, disadvantaged Australians. In the context of the news of the day, the NSW Supreme Court’s ruling in favour of the bid by the state’s police to stop the planned Black Lives Matter rally in Sydney’s CBD on Tuesday was eminently sensible. But protest organiser Padraic Gibson’s pledge to push ahead with the event, regardless of the outcome of the movement’s court appeal, was grossly irresponsible. Had the movement suspended street demonstrations until the COVID-19 crisis was over, it might have won new respect. Now, its credibility is in tatters.

In Victoria on Sunday, Premier Daniel Andrews announced 10 more deaths from coronavirus, including a man in his 40s and seven nursing home residents. There were 459 new cases, 228 people in hospital and 42 in intensive care. Of those in intensive care, 10 people are under 50; two in their 20s, two in their 30s and six in their 40s. As Victorian Health Minister Jenny Mikakos says: “This is not an older person’s disease.’’

Sydney, which recorded 14 new cases, has no room for complacency either, with Premier Gladys Berejiklian conceding NSW could be on a “similar path to Victoria”. Against that background, if Tuesday’s Black Lives Matter protest proceeds, attendees who break social distancing rules, and the organisers, should be fined. Such events are not risk-free. As we reported 12 days ago, Victorian health authorities confirmed a link between two cases in people who attended the BLM protest in Melbourne’s CBD in June and a cluster of 240 cases in public housing towers in the city’s inner northwest.

After almost three weeks’ lockdown across metropolitan Melbourne and the Mitchell Shire — costing the national economy about $1bn a week — Victorians potentially face an extension of the lockdown beyond the scheduled end date, August 19. The second outbreak of the virus is an “unfolding tragedy that is hard to get your head around”, as Victoria’s Chief Health Officer, Brett Sutton, says. At least, as Mr Andrews says, the caseload is not doubling and redoubling every few days, as it has in some places overseas.

The Andrews government needed to reboot its messaging and has done so. Dramatic as it is, the multi-language campaign launched on Saturday, in which a virus survivor says his experience was “like drowning’’, has potential to cut through. Last week, Mr Andrews lamented the failure of many Victorians to follow basic instructions on isolating after taking a coronavirus test and waiting for results. At the same time, delays reported by some people in receiving COVID-19 test results — more than a week in some cases — are not conducive to people following best practice. Challenging as the outbreak is, with more than 40,000 tests carried out a day, health authorities, backed up by ADF and interstate assistance, need to concentrate on speeding up testing and further improving contact tracing.

Victoria’s second surge has struck 40 nursing homes, including residents of St Basil’s Homes for the Aged in the northern Melbourne suburb of Fawkner. So far, the facility has seen 78 cases. As Remy Varga reports on Monday, families of residents are desperate for information about loved ones, after the operator was forced to relinquish control of the facility to the federal government last week. That frustrating lack of information must be remedied immediately. The elderly are acutely vulnerable to the virus. And Victoria’s second wave has shown up many of the problems in the neglected aged-care sector, in which poorly paid, largely casual staff are believed to be responsible for spreading the virus.

As Josh Frydenberg says, Victoria’s COVID fight is crucial to the national economy, of which the state comprises a quarter. The problem belongs not only to our second-largest state, but also to the nation. It is crucial that others take reasonable steps to avoid outbreaks in their jurisdictions. For a start, Sydney’s BLM demonstrators need to stay home on Tuesday.