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Victoria has recorded 459 new cases of coronavirus today, and ten deaths.
The new deaths include one man in his 40s.
Seven of the deaths are linked to aged care facilities.
Three women aged in their 70s and 80s are among the deaths, and seven men aged from their 40s to 80s.
The Victorian death toll now stands at 71.
There are currently 4233 active coronavirus cases across the state, with 560 linked to aged care facilities.
There are 228 Victorians in hospital, 42 of which are in intensive care.
Premier Daniel Andrews said the 381 coronavirus cases among healthcare workers pose a challenge to Victoria’s healthcare system.
“That is a significant challenge, given, whilst we have overall capacity and we’ve worked very hard all throughout the year to grow the number of people that can be available for our fight against this virus in a clinical sense, whenever we have clinical staff and other critical health workers away, furloughed because they are a close contact or in fact as an active case, that does put some additional pressure on our system,” Mr Andrews said.
ADF AND PARAMEDICS JOIN FORCES
The Premier announced Australian Defence Force personnel will from tomorrow begin training with Ambulance Victoria ahead an on-road partnership to support paramedics.
“We have some 200 off-roster paramedics and third-year students helping us with contact tracing, their skills in dealing with dynamic circumstances means they are perfectly suited to that,” he said.
“That number may in fact grow over time.
“20 ADF personnel who tomorrow will work alongside Ambulance Victoria paramedics in joint crews.
“That will scale up over the next eight to 10 days to around 150 ADF staff, so essentially freeing 150 Ambulance Victoria paramedics to do other tasks, and also, I suppose, getting ahead of any potential furloughing or any potential quarantine that has to happen because of any positive cases across our Ambulance Victoria workforce.”
WHAT’S DRIVING THE SECOND WAVE?
Workplaces are driving most cases during the second wave of the virus, the Premier said.
“Aged care, health care, big distribution centres, meatworks, cool stores, big warehouses, these workplaces are driving most of this second wave and therefore what that tells you is that some people, for whatever reason - not a matter of judgement, just a fact - some people are feeling sick, they have symptoms and they are still going to work,” he said.
“If that continues, then we will just continue to see more and more cases.”
People who head to work with virus warning signs pose an unnacceptably high risk to co-workers, Mr Andrews said.
“These big, often very large employers who are well and truly in the centre of the outbreaks we’ve seen as part of the second wave, I think they know and understand they’ve got to be taking steps,” he said.
“I think many, many of them are, it’s always about double-checking, triple-checking, making sure they have all the right processes in place.”
AGED CARE’S COVID CRISIS
Individual providers for aged care facilities need to take responsibility for their part in the coronavirus death toll, Mr Andrews said.
It comes as coronavirus cases at Victorian aged-care homes have rocketed to more than 500 as health authorities race against time to stop rising deaths and hospital admissions among vulnerable residents.
St Basil’s Home for the Aged in Fawkner evacuated at least 20 residents on Saturday after the cluster, Victoria’s largest at an aged-care home, swelled to 74 cases.
The Sunday Herald Sun can reveal there were significant delays in the outbreak response at St Basil’s, with management choosing not to move staff out and bring new staff in immediately after positive results were discovered.
It is understood the federal government intervened on Wednesday by sending nursing graduates to the site.
This was then boosted on Thursday by 12 registered nurses supplied by the state government.
Family members have also complained about poor communication from management and a lack of information about their loved ones. The 74 cases connected to the home include staff and residents.
SCROLL DOWN TO THE COMMENTS TO LEAVE A TRIBUTE FOR A LOVED ONE LOST TO CORONAVIRUS.
Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt on Saturday announced the establishment of the Victorian Aged Care Response Centre — which will be in operation from Monday — in a bid to control the spiralling situation across 38 sites.
The task force will include members of the Australian Defence Force, state and federal governments, emergency management teams and medical personnel and help with prevention, outbreak management and control.
“This is to ensure rapid response where these cases are occurring,” Mr Hunt said.
A total of 260 aged-care residents from 23 facilities, and 265 staff across 45 homes, were yesterday confirmed as having the virus.
Cases also grew at Estia Aged Care in Ardeer and Menarock Life Aged Care in Essendon, which now have 71 and 60 cases respectively.
Victoria recorded 357 new cases of coronavirus on Saturday, with five more lives lost.
Those deaths included a woman in her 90s, a man and woman in their 80s, a woman in her 70s and a woman in her 60s, bringing the state’s total death toll to 61.
An ADF member helping with testing efforts was diagnosed positive. ADF personnel are attending homes of those who have tested positive but who do not answer their phone or co-operate with public health officials.
Chief Health Officer Professor Brett Sutton said the current daily figures would result in up to 40 people admitted to hospital every day.
The Herald Sunrevealed on Saturday hospitals were bracing for a potential doubling in the number of patients.
Prof Sutton said: “At some point we will see a stabilisation in the active number of cases in Victoria. The number of those hospitalised will continue to increase for a few weeks yet.”
FAMILY BELIEVE ST BASIL’S DIDN’T TAKE VIRUS SERIOUSLY
The family of coronavirus victim Georgia Mitsinikos has criticised St Basil’s nursing home over the grandmother of seven’s death.
They believe those managing the Fawkner home now linked to 74 COVID-19 cases and at least three deaths, didn’t take the virus seriously until it was out of control.
Mrs Mitsinikos, 87, died at the Northern Hospital on Thursday.
She was taken to hospital just the night before her death.
Daughter Maxine Tsihlakis told the Sunday Herald Sun she believed her mum, who had lived at St Basil’s for two years, had a cough and fever for days.
“I am just so angry,’’ Ms Tsihlakis said. “They should not be allowed to get away with this. My mum is gone and whatever I do is not going to get her back.”
Ms Tsihlakis in a July 17 email to the nursing home — seen by the Sunday Herald Sun — raised fears her mum had contracted coronavirus after learning she’d been unwell but only given paracetamol, and a doctor who was scheduled was yet to visit.
Nursing home staff replied that Mrs Mitsinikos, who had dementia, returned a negative COVID-19 test the night before.
Family, who hadn’t seen Mrs Mitsinikos for a month due to visitor restrictions, were concerned she may have since contracted COVID-19.
But repeated phone calls to inquire about their mother’s health went unanswered as they read the home’s emails about its rising case numbers.
The only phone contact was to ask if Mrs Mitsinikos could be taken to hospital.
“I think she was sick at least a week,’’ Ms Tsihlakis said. “If they’d taken it seriously the coronavirus wouldn’t have spread to nearly all the residents.
“Why would they leave them all there and all of a sudden it spreads like wildfire? The only people going in and out were the staff who I know were doing all they could.
“I believe the management weren’t taking all the coronavirus precautions they were supposed to.”
Mrs Mitsinikos’s family said they were grateful to the home’s frontline staff, especially those in the dementia ward. St Basil’s was contacted for comment.
- Wes Hosking
SCHOOLS, CHILDCARES WANT MORE HELP
Principals and childcare centre operators are ramping up pressure on the state government over safety concerns, contact tracing bungles and a lack of support.
Dozens of families from one southwestern childcare centre were not told they were close contacts of an infected user of the centre for nine days, one staff member has revealed.
“This meant they were not isolating when they should have been because they didn’t know and in the end we had to tell them ourselves,” the senior staffer said.
Australian Childcare Alliance president Paul Mondo, confirmed hundreds of close contacts of infected childcare families continued to mix in the community because of departmental delays.
The news comes as 118 early childhood services and 41 schools are closed to due coronavirus cases or government restrictions.
In other disclosures, principal Paul Clohesy from Trinity College in Colac said his staff had to contact nearly 70 school families themselves.
He said “overwhelmed” DHHS staff did not get in touch for nearly three days with those identified as close contacts of an infected student and then asked the school to send out their letters.
Jeremy Stowe-Linder, principal of Bialik College in Hawthorn East, said DHHS staff were “well-meaning but unable to assist, which makes it much harder for us”.
His staff could not get through to DHHS on the phone when they were dealing with a suspected case on campus. Despite remote learning, the school still has 400 people on site. “We would like to be more supported to follow the government agenda,” he said.
Opposition education spokeswoman Cindy McLeish said the government should provide a dedicated COVID-19 hotline “to provide resources … during their time of need”.
Education Minister James Merlino said the “settings and arrangements” were based on the advice of the Chief Health Officer.
- Susie O’Brien
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HOW COVID-19 HAS CHANGED OUR LIVES
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https://news.google.com/__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?oc=5
2020-07-26 01:38:00Z
CBMisAFodHRwczovL3d3dy5oZXJhbGRzdW4uY29tLmF1L2Nvcm9uYXZpcnVzL3N0LWJhc2lscy13YXMtc2xvdy10by1yZXNwb25kLXRvLWRlYWRseS12aXJ1cy1vdXRicmVhay1mZWRlcmFsLWdvdmVybm1lbnQtZm9yY2VkLXRvLXN0ZXAtaW4vbmV3cy1zdG9yeS84NmQzNWNiOWI2OGQ1M2Y5ZDVkYzVlZWU4NWJkZDNlNtIBsAFodHRwczovL2FtcC5oZXJhbGRzdW4uY29tLmF1L2Nvcm9uYXZpcnVzL3N0LWJhc2lscy13YXMtc2xvdy10by1yZXNwb25kLXRvLWRlYWRseS12aXJ1cy1vdXRicmVhay1mZWRlcmFsLWdvdmVybm1lbnQtZm9yY2VkLXRvLXN0ZXAtaW4vbmV3cy1zdG9yeS84NmQzNWNiOWI2OGQ1M2Y5ZDVkYzVlZWU4NWJkZDNlNg
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