Australia records its highest overnight coronavirus death toll as aged care continues to struggle – as it happened

That’s where I’ll leave you for now. Amy Remeikis will be back first thing tomorrow. Thanks as always for reading.

Here’s what we learned today:

• Australia has again recorded its deadliest day of the Covid-19 pandemic after Victoria recorded 21 deaths overnight. In another horror day for the state, another 410 cases were also recorded. The 21 deaths included two women and one man in their 70s. Six women and five men in their 80s. Five men and one woman in their 90s, and one woman in her 100s. Sixteen out of the 21 deaths were linked to aged care outbreaks.
• A dispute between the Victorian government and the federal defence minister over whether or not ADF personnel were offered for the hotel quarantine program continued after Victoria’s emergency management commissioner Andrew Crisp released a statement saying ADF was involved in planning, but no personnel were offered or asked for.
• The Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, said there had been a number of “increases of concern” in regional parts of the state including Geelong, Bendigo and Ballarat.

View image in fullscreen

• New South Wales recorded 18 new cases of Covid-19 overnight, while the government announced residents returning from Victoria will have their hotel quarantine fee waived for the next month to ease the financial burden on returnees.
• The NSW government also announced a five day window for ACT residents stuck at the Victorian border to return home beginning tomorrow.
• The NSW premier, Gladys Berejiklian, again upped her rhetoric on the importance of wearing face masks without making them mandatory as the state continues to grapple with a smaller second-wave outbreak.
• The aged care royal commission heard evidence that deaths in aged care facilities in Australia were the second highest in the world. Prof Joseph Ibrahim, the head of the health law and ageing research unit at Monash University’s department of forensic medicine, said the government had treated aged care with “an attitude of futility” during the crisis, something deputy chief medical officer Nick Coatsworth later described as “insulting”.

View image in fullscreen

A newspaper in western Victoria has announced its closure after the South Australian government’s announcement of tougher border restrictions today.

In a post on Facebook, Edenhope local paper the West Wimmera Advocate announced its next edition would be its last after “constantly changing restrictions, and more and more rules”.

“I don’t have the energy for negotiating a new print arrangement on top of everything else. Sorry, but I am burnt out.”

A committee stacked with Liberal and Labor MPs has said there is no compelling need for federal politicians to face a binding code of conduct and has recommended against establishing an independent parliamentary standards commissioner, my colleague Christopher Knaus reports.

AAP reports that an investigation has been launched after a 25-year-old Queensland man who allegedly fled mandatory quarantine after visiting a New South Wales Covid-19 hotspot surrendered to police.

The Queensland man has handed himself into police after allegedly fleeing mandatory coronavirus hotel quarantine in a rural town. Police began searching for the 25-year-old on Tuesday after he left a Toowoomba hotel on day nine of his two-week isolation period.

“That person has returned into quarantine ... Surrendered himself,” deputy commissioner Steve Gollschewski told reporters on Wednesday.

View image in fullscreen

The man had tested negative to Covid-19 after returning from a NSW hotspot and was not considered a high risk to the community.

Gollschewski said the man would now be retested “to make sure he remains Covid negative and give assurance to the community that whilst he was out there was no spread”.

The man has been charged with attempting to enter Queensland unlawfully and will appear in the Goondiwindi Magistrate’s Court in September.

Gollschewski said it was the first time a person had fled a police managed quarantine hotel while isolating, and an investigation was underway.

12 Aug 202003.29 EDT

Elias Visontay

Department of health secretary Brendan Murphy has acknowledged that if face masks for aged care workers in Victoria were made mandatory earlier that the number of infections entering aged care homes could have been reduced.

When asked about the decision to make masks mandatory for aged care workers in Victoria from 13 July, the former chief medical officer told the aged care royal commission on Wednesday said “in hindsight you could have implemented that earlier, absolutely”.

View image in fullscreen

“The situation changed very, very rapidly in Victoria in July,” Murphy said.

When asked if this would have led to less infections in facilities, he said “it’s possible, yes”, but noted it was speculation.

“Masks ... have added some value but they are no panacea,” he said.

The admission came after Murphy’s earlier request to respond to the allegation the federal government failed to develop a Covid-19 response plan for the aged care sector was shot down by the commissioners.

South Australia has announced tougher restrictions for people entering the state, as well as making Covid marshalls mandatory at licensed venues.

On Wednesday the state’s police commissioner, Grant Stevens, said the ongoing severity of the outbreak in Victoria had prompted the government to impose new restrictions on people living in border communities between the two states.

People in cross-border communities have been able to enter SA for a variety of reasons including school, work and medical appointments, but from 21 August those people will need to be approved as an “essential traveller”.

There will be exemptions for senior school students and farmers who own properties spanning across the border.

View image in fullscreen

Also on Wednesday the SA premier, Steven Marshall, said Covid marshalls will now be mandatory in pubs, cafes, gyms, shopping centres and food courts.

We are looking to make sure that there is somebody who is responsible for the Covid-safe plan on licensed premises.

We will do everything we can to keep our state safe, keep as many people employed as possible and we’ve been working with the industry to identify ways that we can keep the same level of restrictions, and that means not increasing them even further like they are in other states.

A pub lunch attended by 10 Brisbane Broncos players last month is the latest biosecurity breach being investigated that could throw the NRL season into further chaos.

Very happy for the people of the ACT.

More coming out of Western Australia in that stoush between the state government and Clive Palmer.

New South Wales Health has just issued changes to border closure orders that will allow ACT residents to travel home from Victoria to the ACT by road from tomorrow for five-day period.

The amending order will begin on 13 August and allow ACT residents to travel through NSW from Victoria between 9am and 3pm each day, until 3pm on 17 August.

According to NSW Health, ACT residents located in Victoria can travel by road if they:

• Have sufficient fuel for the complete journey through NSW to ACT to avoid refuelling.
• Travel through NSW by the route designated by the commissioner of police without stopping except for fatigue or hygiene breaks at designated safe locations.
• While in NSW, only travel between 9am and 3pm.
• Maintain physical distance from people they are not travelling with.
• Carry their ACT Entry Authorisation Certificate.
• After transiting through NSW, re-entry to NSW will not be permitted for at least 14 days after initial entry into the ACT.

Anyone who breaches the Amendment Order can be subject to a $5,000 on-the-spot fine.

View image in fullscreen