We’re going to wind things up for the evening on what’s been a quieter day overall. Here are the main events:
Two more people have died of Covid-19 in NSW, with both cases linked to the Ruby Princess. A 74-year-old woman died in John Hunter hospital and a 79-year-old man died while being treated in Northern Beaches hospital.
Tasmania has placed most of the north-west of the state on lockdown. 1,200 hospital staff and their families, meaning about 5,000 members of the north-west community, have been placed on a strict quarantine lockdown.
The health minister, Greg Hunt, said Australia now has 6,335 people who have been diagnosed with Covid-19. Of those 61 people have died, 238 people are in hospital, 81 are in intensive care, 35 are on ventilators. More than half have recovered
The Apprise Centre of Research Excellence, which leads Australia’s research into infectious diseases, will lead a national study that will analyse thousands of Australians from different risk groups to try to understand how many people are immune to Covid-19.
Queensland students are being asked to continue to learn from home until 22 May. Schools in the state will be open to children of essential workers and vulnerable students only.
The ACT’s chief minister, Andrew Barr, has said the ACT could take part in trials of easing restrictions in conjunction with neighbouring regions in NSW. He stressed this was unlikely to happen this month.
Thanks again for following along. We’ll see you back here tomorrow.
Interrupting Covid-19 coverage with this cheerier piece of non-coronavirus news. My environment colleague, Graham Readfearn, has written about the Murray and Darling rivers reconnecting for the first time in two years.
This does not signal the end of the drought, but you can read about what it means for communities on the river system here.
Queensland’s premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, has made a few more comments about those interim school arrangements announced earlier today. From next Monday, most students will continue to learn from home, with schools open only to children of essential workers and children from vulnerable families.
“We are in extraordinary times and this will take place until Friday 22 May, and then we will review it again,” Palaszczuk said in a statement this evening.
She said the diagnosis of 35 new Covid-19 cases in the state over the course of the long weekend was “an extraordinary effort” but “this is just the start, there’s a huge road to go, a long way to go and we need to keep this up”.
In relation to professional sport, Palaszczuk said there is no health advice suggesting any sporting code could resume.
Australian researchers say they are “a few weeks” away from concluding clinical trials of drugs that could be used in the treatment of Covid-19 patients.
SA premier Steven Marshall points to the number of cases in the US and the UK when pushing back against talk about easing restrictions.
It’s too premature, he says. Australia is doing really well at flattening the curve. The national cabinet will meet this week, and then the following week there will be data that will show where Australia is likely to go, and what the response needs to be.
On the Qantas cluster in SA, the state authorities say Qantas has been very helpful in the investigation, and thorough cleaning has been undertaken, so when staff return, or new staff go to the affected area, they can be sure they won’t be infected.
No one who was in any of the public areas around the location has tested positive for coronavirus.
One woman refused to stop when she crossed the border into South Australia and when pulled up by police, coughed on them, the SA police commissioner Grant Stevens alleges.
Just catching up on the South Australian press conference – Sky News is now playing the presser in full, so I can summarise it a bit better.
Over the long weekend, police monitored popular areas, holiday areas, beach fronts, etc.
There were 640 people checked in relation to quarantine obligations and almost all were complying.
About 620 businesses were checked and only two were not compliant.
There were 630 people were crossing the border over the long weekend. Around half were essential travellers, and the other half were required to go into isolation for two weeks.
Our colleagues in the UK reported overnight that Facebook removed an anti-5G group, which had been spreading misinformation linking the roll-out of 5G telecommunications services to the spread of coronavirus.
It was so bad in the UK, people had begun attacking phone poles.
I went to check if one of the most prominent ones in Australia was still up and couldn’t find it. Most of the anti-5G groups were no longer coming up in search results.
Shortly after I’d discovered they’d renamed themselves to “Australians for safe technology” in the hope it would stop them being banned.
Facebook in Australia has already agreed to remove content linking coronavirus to 5G, and communications minister Paul Fletcher has asked YouTube to look at removing similar content from its platform.
While Cook has been talking, South Australia’s health minister, Stephen Wade, is providing an update. Because the states, for some reason, like having press conferences at the same time.
Wade confirms two new cases in South Australia overnight – none from the Qantas cluster, which stands at 34 cases.
Seven hundred and fifty Qantas staff are isolating right now, he says.
There are 13 people in hospital for treatment, and six in the ICU. One person is in a critical condition.
On the cruise ship Artania, the crew members are isolated from others on board, Cook says. Once the 14 days isolation are over, those who haven’t been exposed to the virus won’t get it, he says, so they can then sail away from WA.
Those who have been confirmed to have coronavirus have been removed from the ship for treatment.
WA’s health minister, Roger Cook, is holding a press conference.
He’s asked about what will lead to easing of restrictions.
It’s about the health advice, and it’s being reviewed monthly. The low numbers are just for the past week and a half, so they’d like to see it be like that for a bit longer before a review of any restrictions (worth noting, aside from the no movement between regions and hard closed borders, WA is much less restrictive than the eastern states).
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