Effective from Thursday, general retail will be closed (not including supermarkets, pharmacies, groceries, banks and more) and warehouses, abattoirs and construction sites will have to operate at reduced capacity.
He said further restrictions and clarification would be released in coming days.
Scott Morrisonannounced a “pandemic leave disaster payment” for people in Victoria who are required to self-isolate for 14 days but do not have any paid leave. The payment is $1,500 for the 14 days.
Unions said the payment was a “half-measure” and called for full sick leave.
Acting chief medical officer Paul Kelly responded to the comments of Liberal MP Craig Kelly, who claimed Andrews could be put in jail for 25 years for banning the drug hydroxychloroquine. Paul Kelly says that “it doesn’t work” as a treatment for Covid-19.
Victorian lockdown prevented up to 37,000 infections, study says
Victoria’s lockdowns prevented between 9,000 and 37,000 infections in the month of July, according to new research published today by the Medical Journal of Australia.
The lockdown reduced the reproduction ratio from 1.75 to 1.16, according to the study from the Burnet Institute, Monash University and the Peter Doherty Institute.
The researchers also wrote that despite this reduction, “there remains significant ongoing growth, with an estimated further 14% reduction in transmission required to control the epidemic”.
A woman pushes a pram past a large face mask pinned to a tree in Melbourne. Photograph: William West/AFP/Getty Images
The Australian Association of Psychologists has called for “the urgent extension of mental health support to all Australians”, not just those in locked-down areas.
Tegan Carrison, the executive director of the peak body welcomed increased mental health support in Victoria, and said it should be extended.
We want to make sure members of the public see a psychologist, particularly those in Victoria facing fresh lockdowns or those needing to self-isolate or quarantine.
We have already seen a growing trend in suicide rates, anxiety, indicators of PTSD and depression, and the introduction of stage 4 restrictions in parts of Victoria this week only serves to remind us that the pandemic is far from over in Australia.
We fully support the additional sessions to make sure those affected by the crisis in Victoria ... we strongly recommend the additional 10 sessions in the mental health plan be extended to all Australians immediately.
A person wearing a face mask walks past a street art mural in Melbourne. Photograph: James Ross/EPA
Pandemic disaster payment a 'half-measure', unions say
The Australian Council of Trade Unions has called today’s announcement of a $1,500 “pandemic leave disaster payment” a “half-measure”
The payment is only for Victorians, and covers 14 days for someone who has to self-isolate and has no paid leave left. People can access it multiple times.
This falls short of union demands, and Greens leader Adam Bandt said it wasn’t “sick leave” and was a “watered down” disaster payment.
ACTU secretary Sally McManus said the $1,500 for 14 days was half the average wage.
This payment will mean that nearly all full-time workers who are forced to rely on it will take a pay cut while they isolate. This will mean that a financial penalty still remains. This just weakens our Covid-19 defences.
The Morrison government cannot stop at this half-measure. We need federally funded paid pandemic leave for all workers who need to get tested and isolate. That’s how we ensure that this pandemic ends as quickly as possible, with as few people infected as possible.
Bandt said it “isn’t a true leave entitlement” and the government created “a simple, across-the-board pandemic leave entitlement”.
Details appear scant, so some of these issues may be resolved when we know more, but it looks like Morrison’s pandemic payment, which won’t be sick leave, may not do the public health job it needs to.
Also, because this isn’t a true leave entitlement applying across the country, workers without sick leave outside of Victoria will still face the financial pressure of coming in to work while sick or awaiting test results.
Earlier, Daniel Andrews said greyhound racing was being allowed in Victoria because it was a “low-risk activity” and there would be “significant animal welfare challenges” if it was shut down.
He said:
It continues because, obviously, it’s a very low-risk activity. What’s more, there are changes, though. There’ll be no owners, there’ll be no media, there’ll be only the broadcasters and the direct participants involved in that activity.
There are some significant animal welfare issues if you were to try to turn that industry off and take those animals out of training – there are some very significant animal welfare challenges there. So it’s a compromise.
I’m sure many in that industry will not be pleased that it’s been scaled back further. But we think we’ve struck the right balance there.
Daniel Andrews says there would be ‘significant animal welfare challenges’ if greyhound racing was stopped during Victoria’s lockdown. Photograph: Vince Caligiuri/Getty Images
The chief executive of Early Childhood Australia, Samantha Page, says she expects an announcement about childcare from the government in a few days.
She told the ABC:
We were certainly hoping for an announcement. I understand there is a plan to have an announcement later in the week, but the sooner the better, really.
I think early childhood educators and teachers have been working all the way through this pandemic. They have been on the frontline. They need certainty about their working conditions and employment over the next six weeks.
This lays bare the powerful influence of the gambling-fuelled greyhound and horse racing industries. These industries are fundamentally incompatible with animal welfare.
Covidsafe app discovers first contact not already identified
Josh Taylor
The Covidsafe app has finally discovered close contacts not previously identified through manual contact tracing.
A NSW Health spokeswoman told the Guardian that data had been downloaded from the app 33 times, with 14 close contacts not identified through manual tracing found.
None of those close contacts have since tested positive for coronavirus, but for one of the cases, “a previously unrecognised exposure date from a known venue, Mounties, was identified”, she said.
This resulted in the identification of an additional 544 contacts. Two people in this group presented for testing and were subsequently confirmed to have Covid-19.
In Victoria, now in stage 4 lockdown, chief health officer Brett Sutton said the settings in the state, where bars and clubs weren’t open and people were staying home, meant it was “not a time where the app comes into its best use.”
It is now three months since Covidsafe launched.
In less than a month since Ireland launched its version of the app, using the Google-Apple framework that improves issues with bluetooth handshakes between mobile devices running the app, the app has alerted 137 people, according to the Ireland Times, and 129 of those then got in contact with health officials for testing.
That is off a lower base of 1.4 million users, versus over 6.5 million in Australia.
Morrison finishes by saying he thinks the measures taken by the Victorian government are “tough calls” but “necessary”.
I am absolutely sure that [Andrews] hasn’t taken any of them lightly...They’re tough calls and he knows he has to make them. He sought to consult. He sought advice, including from the Commonwealth. And we’ve offered our views and I think the challenges in Victoria are going to be hard to cop. But they’re going to be necessary.
I’m backing Melbourne. I’m backing Victoria and I know they will get through this.
‘I’m backing Melbourne’: Scott Morrison today. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP
I’m not going to get onto what people talk about on Facebook on a day like this.
Kelly says that “it doesn’t work” as a treatment for Covid-19.
Hydroxychloroquine has been used for many, many years for various things, including for malaria prevention. I took it myself for many years when I worked in Africa, and it’s very safe for that particular way of using that drug, and other things currently involved in terms of arthritis and other matters.
But in terms of its use for this particular disease, the jury’s pretty much out – it doesn’t work.
We’re talking about something two months from now ... We’re talking about something many weeks from now, and we’ll be making further assessments of that.
But the jobkeeper program is a national program. It applies in Cairns. It applies in Bunbury. It applies in Brunswick. So it will continue to run as a national program, and any specific issues that are relevant to Victoria, we will seek to meet together with the Victorian government.
Morrison says he is taking advice from medical officers but is adamant “parliament will come back”.
We believe we can put arrangements in place.
It will meet. I always said it would meet. And I meant that when I said it. We’ll be putting in place arrangements that would comply with the advice that we received both from the chief health officer here in the ACT, and we’ve also sought further advice from the CMO.
Kelly says parliament is a risk, but “that risk can be mitigated”.
The acting chief medical officer, Prof Paul Kelly, says the measures just announced today in Melbourne are “proportionate” and “will be effective” in helping the state beat the virus.
Stage 3 lockdowns have been effective to a point but, if we were to continue in the way we’re continuing in Melbourne at the moment, those large numbers we’re seeing at the moment would continue...
This would prolong those stage 3 lockdowns, it would prolong the issues of large numbers of cases and what we’re seeing there in terms of unacceptable illness and even deaths, as well as the seeding into other jurisdictions and the rural areas of Victoria...
And so what was announced today was very proportionate and based on the general principle that the virus does not move by itself. It moves with people. So if you decrease the movement around a city like Melbourne, you will get on top of this virus spread.
The pandemic leave payment only currently applies to Victorians, Morrison says.
This is a disaster payment. If another state were to be in a position – and God forbid they were – that there was a disaster of the scale that we’re seeing in Victoria, then a disaster payment of this nature would be entered into.
People can access the payment multiple times if they directed by health authorities to isolate multiple times, Morrison says.
The cost will be split between the commonwealth and Victoria. The Victorian state government will pay for short-term visa holders and the commonwealth will pay for Australian citizens and residents.
Morrison ends with a message to Victorians:
The idea that, in this country, we’d be living at a time where there would be a night curfew on an entire city of the size of Melbourne was unthinkable.
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