Coronavirus live news Australia: 'Restless' wait for Qld Covid case numbers; Melbourne protests kick off again; NSW leadership contender Rob Stokes vows to stick to Gladys' Covid roadmap
ARL head says it’s “full steam ahead” for the NRL grand final in Brisbane on Sunday night ... unless Queensland cases spike.
Welcome to The Weekend Australian's coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic and response from Canberra.
ARL Commission chairman Peter V’landys says it’s “full steam ahead” for the NRL grand final to be played at Brisbane’s Suncorp Stadium ... unless Queensland records a sudden spike in Covid-19 cases on Sunday.
Queensland Health listed multiple new exposure sites around Brisbane after the state recorded two new locally acquired infections on Saturday, but ploughed on with grand final plans.
“At this stage it’s all good … there’s no cases that they’re not being able to track," V'Landys said on Saturday.
“If that continues tomorrow, it’ll be a restless night for me and the NRL teams.
“If there’s a lockdown, we’ll have to consider postponing the match and moving it to Townsville.
In NSW, as the shockwaves continued over the resignation of outgoing Premier Gladys Berejiklian, planning minister Rob Stokes ramped up his bid for premier, releasing a formal statement to canvas himself as the best person for the top job, and pledging to stick to Ms Berejiklian's pandemic exit plan out of lockdown. On Saturday, NSW recorded 813 new Covid cases and 10 deaths.
In Melbourne, police again arrested cat-and-mouse playing protesters during an anti-lockdown protests around the city's botanical gardens.
It came as Victoria has reported its highest jump in daily cases since the beginning of this outbreak, with 1488 locally-acquired cases, and two deaths.
Australia has now officially fully vaccinated 56 per cent of its eligible residents, and 76 per cent have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine
Here's how Saturday unfolded:
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