Yahoo Finance Victoria records 275 new coronavirus cases and NSW 20
Victoria has identified 275 new cases of Covid-19, with 28 of those connected to known outbreaks and 247 still under investigation. In NSW, 20 new cases of Covid-19 were announced, with four of those cases returned international travellers in hotel quarantine.
“Whilst I remain incredibly concerned, that is one positive takeout that all of the [NSW] cases now are from known sources, which means that people are taking advice, and we need them to continue to do that,” the NSW premier, Gladys Berejiklian, said. “Please make sure, if you have been told to isolate at home, that you spend 14 days at home. Even if your tests come back negative. If you have been told to stay home 14 days, you have to stay home 14 days.”
A further death from Covid-19 has been recorded in Victoria, where 147 people are in hospital, including 31 in intensive care. New South Wales has two patients in intensive care, including a person in their 30s, as Berejiklian warned residents to avoid gatherings to help further contain the spread.
“The next few weeks are critical,” she said. “Please avoid large crowds. Please think twice about going into any place which has crowds in it, even when you are social distancing and, as the advice has been provided in New South Wales, if you cannot guarantee social distancing where you are going, if you cannot guarantee that people will around you respect that social distancing, you must consider wearing a mask.”
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The state’s chief health officer, Dr Kerry Chant, said on Monday the age of one of the intensive care patients was a wake-up call. “I think it always is important to highlight that because often we tend to say this disease affects the elderly, and it does on average, but there will still be young people that are impacted and it is a call-out to everyone to take Covid-19 very seriously,” she said.
The federal deputy chief medical officer Nick Coatsworth was asked whether New South Wales should adopt Victoria’s mandatory mask policy given the rise in cases. he said “even the most strident mask advocate” would be wrong to suggest that the current levels of transmission in Victoria could have been avoided with an earlier mask-use policy.
“And the reason for that is clear in the epidemiology of the infections in Victoria,” he said. “They originated from household outbreaks and then spread out into the community. You don’t wear a mask in your household. So while we will continue to say they have an effect in reducing transmission, the submission that they significantly blunt an epidemic curve is not supported at the moment.”
Quarantine and testing would remain critical to get cases under control, he added.
“It doesn’t matter whether you’re in New South Wales, whether you’re in Victoria, whether you’re in hotel or home quarantine elsewhere in the country: it is absolutely critical that if a public health official has asked you to [quarantine] that you strictly do so. Strictly means that you can’t go out.”
The Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, on Monday said a woman in her 80s had died, bringing the state’s death total to 39. Andrews said although the new number of Victorian cases was lower than the 363 cases announced on Sunday and the 428 cases on Friday, it was too soon to say the curve was flattening.
“I am cautious about this,” he said. “We had a very big day Friday and we had a substantial drop-off, even though we had done more tests. This shows you that it is a wicked enemy, it is unstable and until we bring some stability to this, we won’t be able to talk about a trend. I am much happier to be able to report a lower number than a higher one.
“We still haven’t reached the two-week mark [since lockdown]. It won’t be until Wednesday that we get to the full two weeks of the stay-at-home orders across all of metro Melbourne, albeit some of those hotspot postcodes in the north and the west, they have been under the stay-at-home rules for longer.”
With most children from prep to year 10 in metropolitan Melbourne and Mitchell shire commencing remote and flexible learning on Monday, the state’s education minister, James Merlino, said 1.2m single-use masks would be distributed to to government schools in those areas, and to Catholic and independent schools. From Thursday, mask-wearing will be mandatory in Victoria. There have been reports of price-gouging by stores ahead of the requirement.
“I would encourage everybody to do the right thing and acknowledge that this is no time to be profiting from the pain of others,” Andrew said. “There is no time to be doing that, regardless of a global pandemic or not.
It comes as the inquiry into the state’s hotel quarantine program began on Monday, being led by Justice Jennifer Coate. Making his opening remarks at the inquiry, counsel assisting Tony Neal QC said, “Comments made by the chief health officer to the media have suggested that it may even be that every case of Covid-19 in Victoria in recent weeks could be sourced to the hotel quarantine program”.
“Those assisting you are in the process of obtaining the necessary material and documents and witnesses to put before the board on that very issue,” he said.
Andrews told reporters: “The nature of their inquiry is to give us the answers that we all need as to what went on here”.
“This inquiry is very important, it needs to give us the answers and it is not a matter of me sitting in judgement of myself or my colleagues or our agencies, it is about an independent process looking without fear or favour and giving us the answers we need,” he said.
