Coronavirus: Police investigating Woodville Pizza worker as SA opens and US death toll spirals
South Australians are set for an early COVID-19 lockdown reprieve, as the death toll in the US continues to spiral.
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South Australia’s police force is set to investigate the damaging lies that in part lead to the state’s lockdown.
Police Commissioner Grant Stevens announced the launch of Taskforce Protect, which is set to look into any alleged criminal activities by anyone in the lead-up to and after the advice provided to SA Health prior to the lockdown.
The announcement came after the South Australian Premier Steven Marshall described the pizza shop worker’s lies as “disgraceful conduct” and said the man “deliberately misled” contact tracers working to stem the outbreak.
The issue arose when the man told contact tracers he had purchased a pizza from the Woodville Pizza Bar, leading contact tracers to believe he had contracted the virus from the pizza box and that the COVID-19 strain within the community was spreading more rapidly that usual.
On Wednesday, Mr Marshall announced a six-day-long statewide “circuit breaker” lockdown, largely based on the information provided by the man.
But in the days that followed, experts quickly realised the man had lied, and in fact worked at the pizza shop and contracted the virus through direct contact with community cases.
“Their story didn’t add up. We pursued them. We now know that they lied,” Mr Marshall said.
On Friday, just 36 hours into the lockdown, the Premier announced restrictions would ease and the stay at home order would be lifted by midnight on Saturday.
US DEATH TOLL CONTINUES TO CLIMB
More than 2,000 deaths were recorded in the United States by Johns Hopkins University on Friday — the highest number since early May.
The virus continues to run unchecked across all 50 states with experts and scientific modelling indicating that the death toll from COVID-19 will keep climbing.
It is projected that by December 18, more than 2,300 Americans daily could lose their lives to the disease, according to the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).
Health officials predict a total of 471,000 American deaths by March 1 — up more than 30,000 since their last projection about a week ago.
On Thursday, the US recorded a new high of more than 80,600 hospitalised patients according to the COVID Tracking Project.
Also on Thursday, local time, more than 187,800 new cases were reported nationwide, setting a record.
About 900 medial staff workers at the Mayo Clinic in the Midwest ontrated COVID-19 over two weeks.
“Hospital systems in most states will be under severe stress during December and January even in our reference scenario. Increasing mask use to 95 per cent can save 65,000 lives by March 1,” the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation said.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urged Americans not to travel for the national holiday of Thanksgiving and scale back on traditional gatherings to slow the spread of the virus.
Nearly all of California’s 40 million residents were placed on an overnight curfew Thursday as the state tried to fend off a massive spike in COVID-19 cases.
Additionally, a “limited stay-at-home order” bans non-essential outings between 10pm to 5am starting Saturday, and lasts until at least December 21.
“The virus is spreading at a pace we haven’t seen since the start of this pandemic and the next several days and weeks will be critical to stop the surge. We are sounding the alarm,” state Governor Gavin Newsom said in a statement.
Dr. Anthony Fauci has assured the American public that a coronavirus vaccine would be safe and effective and called for an end to speculation that the jabs have been rushed for political purposes.
“The process of the speed did not compromise at all safety, nor did it compromise scientific integrity,” Dr Fauci said Thursday at the first White House coronavirus task force briefing in months.
“It was a reflection of the extraordinary scientific advances in these types of vaccines, which allowed us to do it in months that actually took years before,” the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said.
“So I really want to settle that concern that people have about that,” he said.
G20 URGED TO CONTRIBUTE TO GLOBAL VACCINE FUND
G20 nations must help plug a $4.5 billion (A$6.15bn) gap in the global COVID-19 vaccine fund to save lives and clear the way for an end to the pandemic, a letter seen by AFP on Friday said.
The letter, sent ahead of this weekend’s virtual G20 summit, was signed by Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission.
“A commitment by G20 leaders at the G20 Summit in Riyadh to invest substantially in the ACT-Accelerator’s immediate funding gap of $4.5 billion will immediately save lives, lay the groundwork for mass procurement and delivery of COVID-19 tools around the world, and provide an exit strategy out of this global economic and human crisis,” the letter dated November 16 said.
“With this funding, and a joint commitment to spend a proportion of future stimulus on the COVID-19 tools needed globally, the G20 will build a foundation to end the pandemic,” added the letter addressed to King Salman of Saudi Arabia, the current G20 president.
ACT-Accelerator, led by the WHO, is a globally-pooled hunt for COVID-19 vaccines, diagnostics and treatments.
There was no immediate comment from G20 organisers in Riyadh.
Major pharmaceutical companies are now closing in on vaccines against the virus, amid a global spike in cases that has caused some countries to reimpose restrictions to kerb transmission.
The COVID-19 pandemic has infected more than 55 million people and caused more than 1.3 million deaths worldwide, according to an AFP tally, and wreaked a grievous toll on the global economy.
The IMF expects the world economy to contract by 4.4 per cent this year. “The lack of an adequately financed global exit strategy is an existential threat to the economic and health security of all countries and their citizens,” said the letter to the G20 president.
“Only by tackling the pandemic globally, will economic vitality be restored and a catastrophe be averted.”
SPAIN TO VACCINATE POPULATION BY 2021
Spain will have vaccinated a large part of its population of 47 million against the coronavirus by mid-2021, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced on Friday.
He said the government had put together “a comprehensive vaccination plan” that would be presented at Tuesday’s cabinet meeting, making Spain the first within the European Union, alongside Germany, to fully map out such an immunisation scheme.
“We are ready,” Mr Sanchez said, indicating the government had been working on the plan since September.
“Our forecasts, under almost any reasonable scenario, show that a very substantial part of the Spanish population will be able to be vaccinated, with all guarantees, within the first half of the year.”
Spain has been badly hit by the pandemic, suffering more than 1.5 million confirmed infections — the EU’s second-highest number of cases after France.
As of Thursday night, it had also lost 42,291 lives to the virus, ranking fourth within the bloc after the United Kingdom, Italy and France.
Last month, Health Minister Salvador Illa said the government had authorised the purchase of 31.5 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine currently being developed by British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca.
The supply of the vaccine is part of an EU scheme and it could start reaching Spain in December “if there are no delays,” he said at the time.
The European Medicines Agency could give “conditional marketing authorisations … as early as the second half of December if all proceeds now without any problem,” EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said.
The EU has contracts to reserve hundreds of millions of doses of future vaccines with BioNTech, Purevac, AstraZeneca and Sanofi if they can be brought to market.
A candidate vaccine being developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca has also been shown to be safe and effective in a smaller study of older adults.
Earlier this week, Spain’s AEMPS medicines agency approved the country’s first phase three trial for a COVID-19 vaccine, one of nine nations to take part in the process.
PM OPTIMISTIC ABOUT SOUTH AUSTRALIA LOCKDOWN
Prime Minister Scott Morrison says South Australia will be “back to normal” within a week, despite previously criticising Victoria’s strict lockdown measures.
South Australia’s Liberal Premier Steven Marshall announced on Wednesday the state would go into a six-day lockdown, as he looked for a “circuit breaker” to quell a spike in COVID-19 cases.
The Prime Minister said the system would be in place “no day longer than it has to be” and was “the result of careful consideration” by the SA government.
“We’re going to back his judgment on this. I’m very confident he’ll have things back to normal within a week,” Mr Morrison told The Kenny Report on Sky News.
“Their tracing system is working very well, their isolation system is working very well. Their testing system has been extraordinary.”
Mr Morrison was critical of Victoria’s Labor Premier Daniel Andrews over his response to the state’s outbreak, including a lockdown that lasted over 100 days.
But Mr Morrison said the South Australian government had acted specifically “to avoid what occurred in Victoria” – despite outbreaks in both states being linked to hotel quarantine failures.
“What we have here is not a four-month lockdown. What we have here is not a lockdown put in place because of the failure of any tracing system,” Mr Morrison said.
“This has been done by the Premier to give the best opportunity to return to that normal state as soon as possible.
“This is not pursuing these measures for their own sake at all. They are only done on the clear basis of health advice, and the Premier has been very clear on that health advice.”
The comments come as a person closely linked to the ongoing South Australia coronavirus outbreak has been caught lying to contact tracers, Premier Steven Marshall revealed.
During a press conference on Friday, Mr Mashall said investigations had revealed one of the close contacts linked with the Woodville Pizza Bar had “deliberately misled our contact tracing team.”
“Their story didn’t add up. We pursued them. We now know that they lied,” Mr Marshall said.
“To say I am fuming about the actions of this individual is an absolute understatement. This selfish actions of this individual have put our whole state in a very difficult situation. His actions have affected businesses, individuals, family groups and is completely and utterly unacceptable,” Mr Marshall said.
The Premier did have positive news, however, announcing a raft of immediate and near changes to restrictions across the state.
Effective immediately, residents are now allowed to exercise in family groups, and stay at home orders will be lifted as of midnight on Saturday, with the state set to return to its previous restrictions. Schools are also set to return on Monday.
“We are not going to get a second chance,” Mr Marshall said during a press briefing on Thursday, calling the six day circuit breaker "necessary” to allow experts to carry out a contact tracing blitz.
Mr Marshall also thanked South Australians for their response to the lockdown and presenting for testing
“I want to say how proud I am to SA response to this,” Mr Marshall said. “I ask everybody to be patient, follow the restrictions that have been put in place and to stay positive.
“We want Christmas to be as normal as possible,” Mr Marshall said. ”We’ve got a great shot
The strain of coronavirus circulating in South Australia is being passed from person to person with “minimal symptoms”.
The fast-replicating strain is also onto its fifth generation in the community.
According to a report in The Australian, South Australia’s Chief Medical Officer Nicola Spurrier said while there remains only a tiny number of confirmed cases, there more than 4000 South Australians in mandatory quarantine on account of having visited the same places as those who have been infected.
“The other characteristic of the cases we’ve seen so far is they’ve had minimal symptoms, and sometimes no symptoms, but have been able to pass it on to other people,” Professor Spurrier said.
“We need to stop the virus right at this point. This is still very early days in the cluster. All positive cases have been linked and that’s a phenomenal effort.”
Much of the concern about the outbreak comes from a pizza bar in the suburb of Woodville where a COVID-positive security guard from the Peppers medi-hotel also worked part-time. That pizza bar is now at the centre of transmission concerns, even for customers who ordered home delivery.
Professor Spurrier urged anyone who had ordered food from the pizza bar from November 6 to 16 to get tested even if they had no symptoms.
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– with AFP
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