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Health Minister Martin Foley is providing an update on Victoria’s coronavirus situation alongside the Chief Health Officer and infectious diseases expert, Professor Sharon Lewin from the Doherty Institute.
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You hear all the time about an athlete who has made the biggest sacrifice of their career to reach an Olympic Games.
How many have found a COVID-safe haven in recent months to live and train? Or immersed themselves in some sort of biosecurity bubble, so as not to catch the virus and waste five years of preparing for the biggest sporting competition on the planet?
Well, an Australian Olympian stood in a drive-thru testing clinic in Melbourne for 12 hours this week because she just wants to help.
Australian shooter Elena Galiabovitch works at the South Melbourne drive-through COVID clinic.Credit:Eddie Jim
Elena Galiabovitch, a member of Australia’s shooting team, was swabbing nervy and agitated drivers who just wanted to get tested and get home. Galiabovitch wants to get to the Olympic Games, but not at the expense of protecting her community first.
She has spent the past year on Melbourne’s front line fighting the pandemic, which has also cast an almighty black cloud over the Olympics. Even with the rescheduled competition less than two months away, Galiabovitch still hasn’t stopped working casual shifts.
The 31-year-old doctor, who is studying for a Masters degree to become a urological surgeon, put her profession on the back-burner early last year to concentrate on her preparations for Tokyo. That was until COVID infiltrated Australia and the Olympic Games were postponed until 2021.
The state government’s daily coronavirus press conference has been scheduled for 11.15am today.
Health Minister Martin Foley is set to provide the latest COVID-19 updates alongside the Chief Health Officer and infectious diseases expert, Professor Sharon Lewin from the Doherty Institute.
We will aim to provide you with a live stream of the press conference here in the blog.
This week it transpired that staff at two aged care homes who tested positive to COVID-19 had worked across multiple centres: an Arcare home in Maidstone and a BlueCross facility in Sunshine.
The re-emergence of the virus in aged care was a key factor in prompting statewide lockdowns and once again confining residents of homes to their rooms.
The Arcare aged care home in Maidstone, where an outbreak this week spread to five people.Credit:Eddie Jim
The outbreak at Arcare Maidstone numbered five people, and by Friday appeared likely to have been brought under control. “The two residents who tested positive are both still asymptomatic at this stage and will remain in hospital for precautionary monitoring,” Arcare said on Friday. The staff members who had tested positive were also recovering, it said.
But while the Arcare outbreak was small compared to eruptions in other homes last year – St Basil’s in Fawkner, for instance, had 45 deaths and 223 cases – the reappearance of COVID-19 in aged care sparked a media firestorm.
It forced Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his Aged Care Minister Greg Hunt to field questions all week over whether Australia was once again failing to protect its most vulnerable.
Attention focused on workforce issues in aged care – specifically, why so many private homes have casual staff working across multiple homes.
Malaysia’s current surging COVID is symptomatic of a wave of the virus that has torn through south-east Asia since late March, gripping countries which had largely contained the pandemic in 2020.
There have been a record load of new daily cases in the past 10 days in Malaysia, Vietnam and East Timor and since the start of May in Thailand and Cambodia while Singapore has been in partial lockdown after its own spike, albeit with fractional numbers by comparison.
A medical worker collects swab sample from a woman during coronavirus testing at a COVID-19 testing center in Shah Alam, outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia,Credit:Vincent Thian
Vietnam’s discovery this week of a hybrid variation of strains first recorded in Britain and India was particularly alarming and helped trigger authorities to begin testing all of Ho Chi Minh City’s nine million residents.
Then there are fears infections are much higher than reported in Indonesia, the region’s hardest hit nation throughout the pandemic, plummeting testing rates in post-coup Myanmar and a worrying rise in cases in the Philippines beyond metro Manila.
There has been five new local cases of coronavirus recorded and one new case detected in hotel quarantine.
The Department of Heath says 24,263 vaccine doses were also administered and 36,362 test results received on Friday.
More to come.
Britain’s medicines regulator have approved the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech for use on 12 to 15-year-olds, following similar clearances in the United States and the European Union.
The regulator said it would now be up to the country’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) to decide whether to go ahead and inoculate this age group as part of Britain’s vaccination roll-out plan.
The UK has approved the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for use in 12-15-year-olds.Credit:AP
The chief executive of the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency June Raine said in a statement that her agency had carefully reviewed the clinical trial data in children aged 12 to 15 years old.
“[We] have concluded that the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine is safe and effective in this age group and that the benefits of this vaccine outweigh any risk,” she said.
Top US infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci has called on China to release the medical records of nine people whose ailments might provide vital clues into whether COVID-19 first emerged as the result of a lab leak, the Financial Times has reported.
Included among those nine people are three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, who may have been sick just a month before the first confirmed case of COVID-19 emerged in December 2019.
Dr Anthony Fauci has called for China to release the medical records of nine people who fell ill with COVID-like symptoms before the pandemic.Credit:Bloomberg
“I would like to see the medical records of the three people who are reported to have got sick in 2019. Did they really get sick, and if so, what did they get sick with?“ the report quoted Fauci as saying about the lab workers.
The origin of the virus is hotly contested, with US intelligence agencies still examining reports that researchers at a Chinese virology laboratory in Wuhan were seriously ill in 2019 a month before the first COVID-19 cases were reported.
However, Chinese scientists and officials have consistently rejected the lab leak hypothesis, saying the virus could have been circulating in other regions before it hit Wuhan and might have even entered China through imported frozen food shipments or wildlife trading.
The Victorian economy is expected to bounce back from its COVID-19 lockdown despite a leading consultancy firm putting the cost of the closure at $125 million per day.
Experts from the ANZ and consulting giants EY and KPMG are all tipping the state’s economy will regain its pre-lockdown momentum once the restrictions in force for Melbourne are lifted.
Foodbank, Dave McNamara at the charity’s LaTrobe Street pop-up site.Credit:Chris Hopkins
Work by KPMG, based on the state’s extended 2020 lockdown, suggests the current restrictions will cost Victoria about $125 million a day, much lower than early industry estimates.
KPMG chief economist Brendan Rynne said while workers were having to weather this lockdown without the federal government’s JobKeeper wage subsidy, fewer businesses were being forcibly shut this time.
The principal of the inner-city school at the centre of the new Delta variant cluster has urged the community to get tested.
The new outbreak, linked to a West Melbourne family who had recently returned from holidaying in NSW, has since spread to two adults and a grade 5 pupil at North Melbourne Primary School.
In an email sent out to the school’s community, principal Sarah Nightingale said the school was safe with the site thoroughly cleaned.
North Melbourne Primary School has been closed after two COVID-19 cases were linked to the school.Credit:Eddie Jim
Ms Nightingale said the new case was an addition to the other cases linked to the school where two cases attended the premises between May 25 and May 27.
“The additional individual did not attend the school while infectious and therefore, no additional public health actions are required,” she wrote.
“Our school will continue [to] operate a learning from home model in line with the current advice from the Victorian Chief Health Officer for schools in metropolitan Melbourne.
“I would like to again thank the entire school community for your patience, understanding and support during this time. If you have not yet been tested, I would strongly encourage you to do so.”
https://news.google.com/__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?oc=5
2021-06-05 00:57:22Z
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