Live: Victorian police confirmed close contacts after COVID-positive person attended Melbourne protests

By Dannielle Maguire

They’ll be in Perth in person, but in Victoria in spirit

The Presidents of both AFL Grand Final sides say the players will be thinking of their locked-down fans in Melbourne during tomorrow’s match.

More than 60,000 people are expected to attend the game at Perth Stadium tomorrow, which is just the second grand final to be played outside of Melbourne.

 

Speaking to ABC Radio Melbourne, Demons President Kate Roffey has given a shout-out to the fans.

“To all the supporters who can’t be over here, I know the boys will be playing their hearts out tomorrow for you,” she says.

“They don’t wanna win for themselves, they don’t even wanna win for each other, they actually wanna win for every single fan of the Melbourne Football Club who, A, waited so long and B, actually can’t be here.”

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We *just* made it to the hospital in time. Given the influence the blog had on how our newborn’s arrived, I’m proud as punch to share that it’s a girl!

-Jake

I should say that I have no way of verifying whether this is our original Jake, but honestly we all need some good news so let’s run with it.

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

Trying to think of a good Tame Impala pun but I can’t

WA’s Tame Impala will change the venue for an upcoming concert in Texas due to the amphitheatre not allowing vaccines to be mandated for entry.

The originally scheduled venue, Austin’s Frank Erwin Center, is a government-owned building and will not allow proof of vaccination requirements to be enforced for entry.

In a tweet, the Tame Impala says the “current venue will not comply with our COVID protocols that were put into place to keep our crew, artists and fans safe, so we have no choice but to move to a new venue”.

The band ruled that everyone attending their US tour had to prove they’re vaccinated or have tested negative for COVID within 48 hours of the event.

Reporting by Judd Boaz

It is true — I have the tweet to prove it.

The Northern Territory HAS declared all of regional Victoria a hotspot

Yep, there it is — have just found the updated information. 

The NT Chief Health Officer has declared all of regional Victoria to be a COVID-19 hotspot from 5pm ACST today for the purposes of travel to the Northern Territory.

All of Victoria is now a hotspot for the NT — which means you need an approved exemption to enter the Territory, and you’ll need to stay in supervised quarantine for 14 days.

I feel like we’re putting a lot of pressure on Jake and his wife here

Any *baby* updates yet?

-Concerned in Vic!

I feel like they’ll probably be a bit flat out right now, so let’s not stress if we don’t hear from them.

But also, Jake and Jake’s wife, you have a big ol’ team of supporters now so if you wanna announce your newborn to the entire blog family, email me. If you missed the whole Jake’s-wife-going-into-labour situation earlier in the blog, just scroll down, like, a few hours. 

I am a high school teacher in Vic and I am required to have my first dose before 18th Oct due to the mandatory requirement announced this week. However the first appointment I can find anywhere near me isn’t until the end of Nov. Will I be stood down from my job because the government has failed to get enough doses of the vaccine?

-No vaccine supply

If you have clear evidence that you’ve attempted to make a booking, I’d be going to your principal/manager with that and having a chat with them ASAP — that booking shows you intend to get vaccinated, but as we’ve seen time and time again, supply varies a fair bit across different parts of the country. 

The ruling is that “all staff in schools and early childhood services will be required to have a first dose by 18 October or have a booking within one week” (unless a medical exemption applies) — the Victorian Government also says “all government school staff entitled to a half-day of paid time off to get their vaccination“, which hopefully will help too. 

Just been told NT is declaring regional Victoria a hotspot again? Is that true.

-Regional vic

As of right this second, the most recent additions to the NT’s list of declared hotspots are the Moorabool Shire and Macedon Ranges Shire, which were added earlier this week. I’ll keep an eye on that and see if it changes through the evening though. 

There certainly are parts of regional Victoria that are hotspots in the NT and have been for a while — you can see the full list here.

Kelsie, re your explaination of numbers in ACT. I would also assume the demographic factor in ACT is different to both NSW and VIC. With many of the population working in the public service (those jobs that can be done by and large from home) there would presumably be less workplace spread and thus, less people taking it home to their families and it spreading amongst them as well.

-Bling

Oh yes, most certainly! That’s the thing about COVID modelling, Reff numbers, all that stuff — humans aren’t robots, and you can make the most informed predictions possible, but that still doesn’t mean the people you’re doing the predictions on will behave in the exact way that you assumed they would when you were doing the predicting.

Reff numbers can take into account a heap of variables, but at the end of the day, it’s still only a well-educated estimate. Let’s say the Reff is three, for example — that assumes that everyone who has COVID will give it to three people. But Jack up the road might not give it to anyone because he was in quarantine the whole time, while essential worker Jill down the street might not think anything of her runny nose and do three shifts, and spread it to 15 people. Ya know? Variables. Pandemics are full of ’em.

What percentage of Vax are Victoria at today

-Please

I shall allow the bar graph to explain: 

Palaszczuk referred to Queensland Speaker over comments on Doherty Institute modelling

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has been referred to the Speaker by the Opposition who allege she deliberately misled Parliament over Doherty Institute modelling’s prediction of COVID-19 deaths.

Opposition MP Jarrod Bleijie wrote to Speaker Curtis Pitt on Friday asking he consider referring the matter to the Ethics Committee to determine whether Ms Palaszczuk deliberately misled the House this month.

It comes a day after an ABC Fact Check found the Ms Palaszczuk’s claim was misleading, which she said in Parliament and posted on social media.

State political reporter Rachel Riga has the full story on this here.

Hi, great job on the blog!!

I’m not sure if this is a silly question, but why are the numbers of the ACT staying consistent each day? not going up or down?

-confused

No question is silly if it’s asked politely!

The ACT is in a bit of a tricky spot at the moment where things are just staying consistent — not blowing up (touch wood), but not really reducing too quickly either.

We’ve heard on-and-off about the Effective Reproduction Rate (Reff) number during the pandemic — which is how many people an infected person will pass the virus to on average (while also considering things like vaccination, immunity social distancing and stuff). To get cases to go down, we need that number to be less than one. Right now, it’s not — but it’s also not a huge number, which is why we’re not seeing big jumps in cases like we did in NSW just a few weeks ago. 

When cases are out in the community, that makes it harder for that number to go down. Add that to household transmission, which we’ve seen a lot of in this Delta outbreak, and it makes it even harder. So what Canberra (and all places that are dealing with outbreaks right now) wants to do is get as many people who come into contact with the virus into isolation as quickly as possible so the Reff goes down, transmission goes down, cases go down.

I’m hoping that was enough information to make that make sense without being too much information and ramble-y. Let me know.

Yesterday in your numbers you guys had mentioned SA had one “historical infection” case. What does this mean?

-Great SA

A historical case generally means that a person has been infected with the virus, but isn’t necessarily infectious anymore — they’re just still shedding some virus particles, which can sometimes be enough to show up on a PCR test (or in a wastewater detection, sometimes).

These sometimes pop up in hotel quarantine/medi-hotels (like the case in SA yesterday) in people who caught the virus while overseas and recovered, but are just still shedding some fragments of the virus. 

Geelong testing sites vandalised

Coronavirus testing sites in Geelong have been vandalised overnight with Nazi symbols and graffiti that said “f*** you Dan” and “Dan Hitler”, among other things.

A testing site at Geelong’s South Barwon Reserve in Belmont was vandalised with graffiti in and outside the tent.

A second testing site in Belmont was also targeted. The tent was quickly replaced and the graffiti was gone by this afternoon.

Police are investigating.

Reporting by Rachel Clayton

Re: WA

How is it that SA has been moved to very low risk and QLD is at a stand still as low risk and have to quarantine, we both share boarder’s with NSW?

-Missing my husband

So does Qld’s proximity to NSW mean Qld will be ‘low-risk’ indefinitely in WA, no matter how few cases we have?

-IcedGem

McGowan just said the border with QLD is only being maintained because of the proximity to NSW. Seems unfair 😞😞

-Qlder

A lot of similar comments to these have come through since Mark McGowan’s press conference before. 

ICYMI, he upgraded Victoria to an extreme-risk jurisdiction (which basically means you have next to no chance of getting in).

Some had hoped that he might downgrade Queensland to a very low-risk jurisdiction in line with the NT, SA and Tasmania because cases there have been fairly under control — but he says it will stay low-risk (which means you have to quarantine on arrival) because of its “proximity to NSW”. 

“Queensland is a low-risk jurisdiction, and the reason it’s low-risk is because it’s had maybe one or two cases in the last few weeks,” he says.

“The reason we’ve kept it as low-risk is its proximity to NSW, otherwise we would have sent it to very low risk so it would have been like SA and the NT. We’re not particularly worried about Queensland.”

But despite not being worried, arrivals from the sunshine state still have to complete a G2G pass, complete a health screening on arrival, quarantine for 14 days at a “suitable premises” if one is available or pay for hotel quarantine if a suitable premises isn’t available, wear a mask and get tested twice in the first 14 days of arriving in WA.

SA news? SA news? SA news?

-Sa

Any news on sa covid??

-Anxious south Australian

I do have SA news, and the news is good!

Tasmanian Premier defends COVID vaccine mandate for health workers

Tassie Premier Peter Gutwein has defended the state’s COVID vaccination mandate for healthcare workers in light of the north-west outbreak last year, after a Launceston doctor wrote to Members of Parliament concerned about the requirement.

The letter from the doctor describes the vaccine mandate policy as “immoral, possibly illegal, and goes against traditional medical practice to gain patients’ informed consent before providing treatment and to respect their autonomy (including their right to refuse treatment).”

But Mr Gutwein said the mandate was about protecting Tasmanians, and that “we don’t want to go back” to risking outbreaks in the state.

“I would hope that some of our most educated people, as that doctor no doubt is, would understand that there are risks associated with working in a healthcare setting,” he said.

“That is an area that has been identified as one that we need to have additional protections around and I would hope that they would support our efforts to protect not only them but the people that come into that hospital, and importantly ensure that we can keep that hospital open into the future.”

Full story from Kate Ainsworth here.

Kelsie! Its fine to wait 30 days between Moderna instead of 28, right? No panic?

-Panik_Kalm_Panik?

No panic.

I haven’t seen any evidence to indicate that 48 hours difference will throw the whole thing out of whack. The less-than-ideal scenario would be to not get your second dose at all — as we know, both doses are important for the full effectiveness of the vaccine.

But if you’re super concerned, give your doctor or your state’s COVID/vaccine hotline a bell and talk it through with someone smarter than me.

Do you use the COVIDBase AU data tracking website?

If you do, you might have seen that the data masterminds behind it revealed their identities this week — prepare to feel OLD.

Teenagers Jack, Darcy and Wesley are the faces behind the impressive number-crunching and chose the day they got their Moderna vaccinations to reveal their identities.

It is only recently that 12 to 15-year-olds have become eligible for vaccinations, and the boys said the whole process was “pretty easy”.

They say they spend a lot of time on the product to make it as comprehensive as they can.

“Darcy’s really skilled with coding and I’m sort of really into the news …and have been really interested in the data. So we’ve decided to take what we’ve been doing and sort of create something with it,” Jack told ABC News.

Read more on this story here.