Queensland to lock down as Australia faces biggest challenge since pandemic began
Authorities are battling to control the spread of the deadly Delta variant after it emerged a Brisbane woman with the strain travelled in the community for 10 days.
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The woman at the centre of Queensland’s latest Covid-19 scare has been confirmed to have the highly-contagious Delta variant.
The case prompted parts of Queensland to enter a three-day lockdown.
The Sunshine State recorded two new cases in the past 24 hours, prompting Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk to enforce a lockdown from 6pm tonight until 6pm Friday.
The affected areas are South East Queensland, Townsville City, Palm Island and Magnetic Island.
A 19-year-old Brisbane hospital clerical worker tested positive after visiting Townsville.
The woman travelled to the northern Queensland town on Thursday, despite experiencing virus symptoms more than a week ago.
She also visited Magnetic Island, where about 2500 people have now been urged to get tested, regardless of symptoms.
The woman travelled back from the island to Townsville on Sunday to attend the local markets, before flying on VA374 at 2.55pm on Sunday to Brisbane.
Ms Palaszczuk said she was “absolutely furious” the worker had not been vaccinated against Covid-19.
The lockdown comes as Victoria declared Perth and the Peel region red zones.
A non-Victorian resident in a red zone cannot obtain a permit to enter Victoria, other than for transit.
Victorian residents who have been in a red zone, other than for transit, can obtain a red zone permit to enter Victoria but they must travel directly home, get tested, and quarantine for 14 days.
The Northern Territory recorded two new locally acquired cases with First Minister Michael Gunner said they are expecting more positive cases throughout this week.
The number of cases associated with territory’s first local outbreak is now nine.
NEW MEASURES TO PROTECT VIC FROM OUTBREAKS
Victoria Police have increased patrols along six key border crossing zones to protect the state’s virus-free status from NSW’s worsening outbreak.
Victoria recorded zero new local cases for the third consecutive day on the back of a strong testing turnout, with more than 20,700 results received. Two new infections were detected in hotel quarantine.
It comes as New South Wales recorded 19 new coronavirus cases.
Of the new cases, only two were under investigation and not yet linked to an existing cluster – but one of the two lives in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.
Meanwhile, Premier Daniel Andrews has called for a massive reduction in the number of people allowed to enter Australia in order to avoid further lockdowns.
The Premier said on Tuesday it was time to consider cutting the number of returned travellers by at least 50 per cent, but flagged going as high as 80 per cent, until more people were vaccinated.
Caps on international arrivals currently allow about 11,000 to come to Australia every week.
But Mr Andrews told ABC Radio Melbourne that cutting that number would be the best way to prevent against further lockdowns.
“Yes, there’d be inconvenience in less people being able to return home, of course there would be, and a lot of that would be heartbreaking,” he said.
“It wouldn’t be forever, it would be until we got a critical mass of Victorians and Australians through the Commonwealth government’s vaccine program.
“Compare a lockdown of a whole city or state, and the pain of that, versus halving or reducing by 75 per cent or 80 per cent, whatever the number is, the number of people who are coming back through hotel quarantine. In my judgment, there’s no comparison.”
The Premier warned no other jurisdiction had seen off a Delta variant outbreak without lockdowns.
“I think that the vast majority of Melburnians and Victorians are far more alarmed at the prospect of having to lock the whole place down,” he said.
“We don’t have enough people with the vaccine, we don’t have a critical mass of people protected.
“This thing spreads much more widely than the stuff we dealt with last year.
“So I think we’ve got less options and we’re in this limbo period,
“If it’s a choice for me between less people coming back … of locking the whole place down, it’s not a difficult decision.”
Mr Andrews later doubled down on his calls to slash the number of international arrivals.
In a statement, he called for a national agreement to tighten the cap on arrivals.
Victoria could stop, or limit, international arrivals to the state however Mr Andrews said a consistent and national approach was needed.
“We’re seeing in Australia, and across the world, that you cannot manage Delta outbreaks without significant restrictions,” he said.
“The lockdowns and restrictions in place across the country right now are all a result of hotel quarantine breaches – which is why we need a national discussion about how many people we’re letting in.
“Locking some people out is better than locking everyone down – we need a national approach to how we manage this new threat until we achieve proper vaccine coverage.”
At a National Cabinet meeting on Monday night, the Premier’s first in more than four months, Victoria and Queensland secured an agreement for the future of hotel quarantine to be discussed at the next substantive meeting in a fortnight.
Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton said Mr Andrews’ calls to cut the number of returned travellers wasn’t based on public health advice.
“It’s a matter of national policy and national cabinet decision making … It’s clear the public health principle is pretty straight forward – the greater the volume of international arrivals, the greater the risk. It’s kind of a linear relationship,” Professor Sutton said.
“It is a matter of weighing up those really difficult considerations around people with strong humanitarian cases to return and the very many people who remain stranded overseas.”
MORE STATES IN LOCKDOWN
Late on Monday night, the Perth and Peel regions in Western Australia went into a four-day lockdown after the emergence of a third case, a Delta variant linked to the Sydney outbreak.
On Monday night the Perth Metropolitan Region and the Peel Region were still designated orange zones under Victoria’s Travel Permit System.
Those travelling from designated orange zones must apply for a permit to enter Victoria, and self-quarantine until returning a negative COVID-19 test.
Meanwhile, Queensland is teetering on the verge of another lockdown, while Darwin has extended its two-day lockdown to Friday.
Incredibly, South Australia introduced some restrictions without even recording a case.
Victoria recorded no new cases on Monday, with Covid-19 commander Jeroen Weimar saying he believed the state was in the “strongest position we’ve ever been”.
But he urged Victorians to reconsider interstate travel plans in the school holidays.
“This is a fluid situation. It is a day by day proposition … anybody travelling interstate should know that this may well change at short notice. It is a challenging time for people to travel with confidence,” he said.
Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Shane Patton said 250 officers will set up around Swan Hill, Echuca, Yarrawonga, Wodonga and Cann River to help stop the virus making its way into Victoria.
Air wing patrols have also been used to monitor the situation from above.
The state government has requested 130 Australian Defence Force personnel to aid compliance operations at airports and doorknocking efforts on close contacts and returned travellers.
Health Minister Martin Foley said additional options to scale up border measures would be introduced if needed.
“Nothing describes the seriousness that the nation is facing more than those extents of border restrictions and permit applications that Victoria has in place,” Mr Foley said.
“We’re now seeing the Delta variant of concern leave its mark in almost every major metropolitan setting in the country over an extremely short period of time. We cannot take this invisible threat lightly.”
It comes as regional Victoria is shaping up as a big winner from Australia’s Covid border closures, as long-suffering tourism operators brace for a rush of school holiday bookings.
Travel bosses are encouraging Victorians to embrace the chill and visit hard-hit regional areas, with events such as Ballarat’s popular Winter Wonderlights back after being shelved last year.
Two new mid-year events – the East Gippsland Winter Festival and Adventure Park’s Winter Glow in Geelong – are also drawing big crowds.
Sharon Maloney, owner of Nhillbilly Farm glamping near the Wimmera town of Nhill, said regional areas needed visitors to survive.
She said farm visitors were treated to the outdoors in comfort, even in midwinter.
“We like to call it a million-star retreat,” Ms Maloney, a tree-change filmmaker, said.
Official figures show tourism spending in regional Victoria bounced back earlier this year, surpassing pre-pandemic levels. Tourists from the city spent a combined average of $25m a night during March in the regions, Visit Victoria data shows.
Victorian Tourism Industry Council chief Felicia Mariani said Melburnians were visiting regional Victoria because of interstate travel fears.
“They’re weary of the book-and-cancel, book-and-cancel dance,” she said.
MAJOR CHANGES TO JAB ROLLOUT
All Australians are now eligible to be vaccinated against Covid-19 — but the AstraZeneca jab is the only option currently available for people under 40.
In a major change to the stuttering rollout, the federal government will set up an indemnity scheme allowing GPs to give out the AstraZeneca vaccine to people of any age, as long as they accept the extremely rare risk of blood clots.
Health advice restricting AstraZeneca to Australians over 60 has hampered the program and sparked fears doses will go to waste. But from Tuesday, all adults are able to book in for the jab with their doctor as AstraZeneca supplies are made available for those under 40.
There have been three clot cases per 100,000 doses of AstraZeneca administered to Australians under 50 so far.
The expert immunisation panel maintains it is a safe and effective jab but had limited its use to Australians over 60 who had a lower risk of the rare clotting condition.
Scott Morrison said on Monday night that all Australians were now able to “go and speak to their doctor and have access to the AstraZeneca vaccine”.
Read the full story.
UNWANTED AZ ’NEEDED OVERSEAS’
Foreign governments are knocking on Australia’s door for unused AstraZeneca doses, the vaccine’s local producer says.
Chris Larkins, operations senior vice-president of CSL subsidiary Seriqus, said governments called from around the world to say “we’ll take it”.
“This product will go to other countries who probably need it more,” he said. “It will go to saving lives.”
Mr Larkins said it would deliver 50 million doses by early 2022, and it would be the government’s decision to pass vaccines on to developing nations.
CSL chief scientific officer Andrew Nash said the fact that blood clots were not seen in trials reflected how extremely rare – “somewhere over one in 100,000” – they were.
The remarks were made on Monday, as CSL opened its doors before an expansion at three sites that will help prepare for future pandemics.
A new $900m base at its Broadmeadows site will more than triple plasma processing abilities, while Tullamarine will be home to the southern hemisphere’s only cell-based influenza vaccine factory by 2026. Cell-based vaccines have a shorter lead time than the chicken-egg method, allowing the factory to quickly switch from flu vaccines and snake antivenene to a new vaccine in the event of future pandemics.
And a 23-storey head office being built on Elizabeth St would encourage researchers from different areas to work side-by-side instead of in “silos”.
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Originally published as Queensland to lock down as Australia faces biggest challenge since pandemic began
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