Live: All the COVID news you need from across Australia

By Liam Butterworth

Cases, hospitalisations and deaths

If you don’t see your state or territory yet, don’t worry — these figures will be updated throughout the day as they become available.

Can’t get enough of the data? Check out the ABC’s Charting the Spread

New South Wales: 25,870 new cases (does not include rapid antigen test numbers) and 11 deaths, 2,186 in hospital (+156), 170 in ICU (+11)

Victoria: 37,994 new cases (PCR: 19,491; RAT: 18:503) and 13 deaths, 861 in hospital (+43), 117 in ICU (-1), 27 on ventilators (-1) Watch the press conference

Tasmania: 1,379 new cases (PCR: 364; RAT: 1,015), 18 in hospital (7 for COVID (-4), 11 COVID-positive with other conditions), 0 in ICU

Queensland: 20,566 new cases; 502 in hospital, 27 in ICU and 6 on ventilators  Watch the press conference

Northern Territory: 594 new cases (RAT: 303), 32 in hospital, 2 in ICU. Watch the press conference

Australia*: 86,403 cases, 25 deaths, 3,599 in hospital, 310 in ICU (*tally so far, will be updated as each state comes in)

SA Premier may be about to give a press conference

I’m told SA Premier Steven Marshall is providing a COVID update soon. (But I’ve been wrong before already today)

We have a YouTube link ready to carry it, if it does happen.

The Premier is in isolation and yesterday gave an insight to his home set-up for the press conferences.

NT reports 32 in hospital, 594 new cases

There are 32 patients with COVID-19 in hospital across the Northern Territory, with 11 of them classified as acute.

Meanwhile, the NT recorded 594 new cases of COVID-19 in the 24-hours to 8pm last night.

Deputy Chief Minister Nicole Manison said there are approximately 2,600 active cases now in the NT, which accounts for about 1 per cent of the entire population.

Three new cases were reported in Yuendumu, and authorities remain concerned at the low vaccination rate —just 11 vaccines were administered in the past 24 hours.

Meanwhile, there are now 5 positive cases in an aged care facility in Alice Springs, however Ms Manison said she had been informed no-one is unwell.

Read more

CHO slams reports of ‘COVID parties’ in Queensland

Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate spoke to Channel 9 this morning, slamming reports of ‘COVID parties’ in the city.

Queensland Chief Health Officer John Gerrad says they are “utterly ridiculous”.

“There is one way, the best way to get immunity to this virus, is through vaccination, not through COVID parties. They are ridiculous, so please stop them. Please stop.” Dr Gerrad says.

He also made a clarification about hospitalisations increasing when schools return.

“I do want to make one point of clarification about something I said before. When I am talking about hospitalisations associated with the schools opening, I am not talking about lots of children being admitted to hospital. That is not what I am talking about. We just know that when schools return to normal functioning you get a lot more transmission of virus in the community in general. It is not that we’re concerned about large numbers of children being admitted to hospital, just to be clear on that.”

Queensland case numbers don’t include breakdown of cases missing yesterday due to software glitch

Yesterday, a software glitch in 4 pathology labs meant not all results were available.

Yvette D’Ath says that has been rectified, but they cannot break down the numbers.

She says today’s number are still likely an underestimate of the true numbers.

“They haven’t been able to dissect, they have given us the current data as of 7pm last night. They have identified the problem, it has been rectified and it was a software problem to do with upgrade, but they have been able to give us the one lot of data,” she says.

“As I said weeks back, the data is not completely reflective of what is happening in the community and that some people are still staying home when they are symptomatically not coming forward for PCR or had not been able to get access to a rapid antigen test,” she says.

Queensland’s peak in hospitalisation expected in early February, CHO says

Dr Gerrard says the next three weeks will be tough and says the peak in hospitalisations will likely happen a week after the peak in cases.

“So, some are in the first or second week of February is when the hospitalisations will plateau and fall, assuming all the mathematical modelling is correct which, by all accounts, it looks like it will be. So I think we are doing reasonably well but the next three weeks will be tough. There will be a lot of people admitted to hospital. There will be significantly more intensive care admissions than what we are seeing now.”

On the infection hotspot the Gold Coast, Dr Gerrard says the equivalent of a ‘ward a day’ is being added, but says plans have been made.

“They had an additional 23 admissions to their ward yesterday. To give you some context of that, a typical hospital ward is somewhere between 24 and 30 patients. That is effectively almost an entire ward in one day. It is expected to continue for a while, but they had planned this well in advance, I know this because I was a part of it and they are dealing with moving patients where appropriate, using the private sector as appropriate. There are plans in place for dealing with the increasing numbers.”

Queensland handed out more than 15,000 testing kits yesterday

Health Minister Yvette D’Ath says Queensland has now received 400,000 RAT, which they are providing to defined close contacts at testing sites.

“We have received over 400,000 tests now in Queensland, we handed out 15,798 kits yesterday to people at our testing sites. We are expecting more, but I want to be clear that the number of tests that the Commonwealth have announced, the majority of those are point-of-care tests. That is not what we need, what we need is self-test. We need the rapid antigen tests. Because the point-of-care test, if we give those at our testing clinics, it requires staff to do the test for the individual, to keep those individuals there waiting 15 minutes to half an hour, and then to track all of the information on the results of the system,” she says.

“It adds to the administrative burden of the testing clinics and does nothing to reduce the lines by giving us predominantly point-of-care tests instead of kits that people can take away. If I can get the Commonwealth to do anything, it is give us more of those self-assessment kits for people to take home, to take pressure off of the testing clinics.”

*NB: According to the Therapeutic Goods Administration, “Point-of-care tests can be used outside the laboratory setting by a health practitioner, or trained staff under their supervision, to test a person for COVID-19. This ensures a suitable health practitioner, or trained person under their supervision is available to ensure an adequate sample is collected, correct interpretation of results and provide immediate clinical advice and treatment if required.”

How to watch the NT press conference

Queensland CHO contrasts current situation with Diamond Princess issues earlier in pandemic

Queensland Chief Health Officer John Gerrard says Queensland’s current situation was showing the COVID vaccines do work.

“I was in Tokyo at the beginning of the pandemic dealing with the Diamond Princess outbreak. Where we had 700 people infected with COVID-19, of which over 30 were on ventilators and intensive care units. 700 positives, with over 30 on ventilators. Now in Queensland, we have well over 100,000 people that are infected, we have documented over 100,000 infections through testing. We have just 27 people in intensive care units of Queensland at the moment,” Dr Gerrard says.

“The lesson is the vaccines are working, they are specifically working on [preventing] people from getting critically ill and reducing hospital admissions. You can still get sick with the virus if we are vaccinated and all those by now will know people who are been vaccinated who do get an illness. They are stopping at ending up in that intensive care unit. It is the disease we are seeing now that is quite dramatically different from what we saw at the beginning of the pandemic.

“As predicted, the number of patients that are getting admitted to the wards of the hospitals is beginning to escalate. We had 502 people in Queensland in hospitals wards as of 7pm last night. That is up from 419 the day before. That is as collating fairly rapidly and that is what is expected to do, they will continue based on our predictions until the beginning of February. Those numbers will become quite significant in the coming weeks until the beginning of February and hopefully the mathematical modelling is correct, it will start to decline after that. That is what we are expecting.”

Queensland vaccinated 6,539 children on first day of 5-11 vaccinations

Queensland Health Minister Yvette D’Ath has praised parents and children for getting out to receive their vaccination on the first day of the 5-11 rollout yesterday.

She says 6,539 were vaccinated in state-run clinics yesterday. She says there are now 34,404 bookings that have been taken. She says that’s out of an eligible cohort of 478,000.

“We know of course that parents are also wanting to go to pharmacies and GPs, and we do hope that the vaccine is supplies from the Commonwealth as quickly as possible so we can get all of these sites up and running and offering vaccinations and not just the state vaccination clinics,” she says.

“I understand that pharmacies and GPs are not taking bookings at the moment because they want to see the vaccines in their hands. They are not wanting to cancel bookings and that is completely understandable but we [want the] Commonwealth to get the vaccines as quickly as possible.”

Queensland reports one new death, 502 in hospital along with 20,566 cases

Queensland has recorded another COVID-19 death overnight.

The Health Minister Yvette D’Ath says the man in his 70s had other health complications.

502 people are in hospital wards with COVID, 27 in ICU and 6 are ventilated.

The state has recorded 20,566 new cases overnight but this includes some data from private pathology clinics that were unable to report yesterday.

Ms D’Ath said the figure is likely an underestimation of the actual cases in the community.

So it seems the SA Premier is not speaking now

We’ve been given a bum steer, the reason we’re waiting for the Steven Marshall press conference is that it’s not happening now.

We’ll let you know if we find out any more.

How to watch the Queensland press conference from 12pm AEST

Federal opposition raises concerns about kids getting vaccines before school returns

The federal opposition is raising concerns not all children will have access to a first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine before school returns.

Health officials are asking parents not to panic if they cannot immediately book their children in to be vaccinated, saying more appointments will become available.

The rollout to children aged five to 11 started yesterday with more than 35,000 doses administered.

Shadow Health Minister Mark Butler says it’s not off to a good start.

“We’ve only got a couple of weeks until school starts preparing to go back, and yet we have stories all around the country of parents unable to access appointments before the end of January, whether that’s with their local GP or frankly with a state-run clinic,” he says.

Deputy Chief Medical Officer Michael Kidd has assured parents there will be enough supply and appointment availability before the return to school.

Allied health workers in Victoria fear they will be forced back to work, even when they are COVID positive

Sally Sara interviewed Andrew Hewat, the assistant secretary of the Victorian Allied Health Health Professionals Association which represents professions like occupational therapists, psychologists and optometrists, for The World Today earlier.

The Victorian Health Department says it is actively considering plans to return staff to the workplace, who have tested positive, but are asymptomatic.

The provision has not been brought in as yet, but has been flagged in the latest contingency planning, as the pandemic escalates.

He says the situation is appalling and will place workers and patients at risk.

“We know that even if you’re asymptomatic, you can still be infectious and we don’t want to see the healthcare workers are taking that infection back into the workplace. They’re very worried about the implications of possibly spreading it to their colleagues, and we’re still possibly spreading it to their patients.

“You have to remember that in Victoria through 2020, we had wave two and throughout that wave, there were significant healthcare worker infections. In fact, through 2020, there were over 4,000 health care workers infected. The majority of those occurred at work.

“This is why we’re calling out and saying enough is enough that we don’t think this is an acceptable level of risk. And we had concerns that these changes will be implemented very rapidly and then we’ll have healthcare workers vulnerable and dangerous situations.

Mr Hewat says staff are facing burnout.

“The burnout is overwhelming. And it’s becoming all-consuming. You know, there’s just massive fatigue. The fact that there’s no, sort of, light at the end of the tunnel and the messaging is that this is going to get worse before it gets better and that you just have to keep pushing through … that’s very hard to cope with,” he says.

“Clearly there is a disconnect between what’s going on at a governmental level and what’s going on on the ground in any health service. And we think that’s largely to blame for the situation that the healthcare workers are in. “

Freight companies need RATs to get staff back to work but ‘can’t get our mitts on any’

COVID isolation rules have changed for workers in essential industries in some states in the past couple of days to try to tackle supply chain shortages.

The federal government is considering whether to extend relaxation of COVID measures to the transport and aviation sectors.

David Simon is the Brisbane-based chief executive of Simon National Carriers, one of the largest privately owned freight companies in Australia. It has thousands of customers, mostly in the agriculture, defence and construction materials sectors. He spoke about proposals to relax isolation requirements in the sector:

“It does cover freight, and we were certainly looking at it yesterday, with some contacts – not close contacts – but contacts of a positive linehaul driver, our first linehaul driver who is a positive case. But the reality is we need rapid antigen tests to allow people to come back to work, close contacts to come back to work. And we just simply don’t have those available,” he says.

“I have tried lots of contacts. We can’t get our mitts on any RATs, we were maybe caught a little off-guard, but we didn’t see them as being a solution. Governments weren’t recognising them.

“We didn’t expect the turnaround we’ve seen from policy, I guess, in the last couple of weeks in recognising them and we didn’t have any in stock.”

He said the hit to the economy could actually become more worrying in the weeks ahead as more retail businesses open after closing over summer.

“We’re fortunately at a very quiet time for the economy, in the retail stores are probably where it’s most visible. But I think in the next two or three weeks towards the end of January, where all forecast for peak the cases, and that’s also when our customers are back, they’ll be wanting to get back into things – the whole economy; building sites will be back on board – that’s when we’re really going to notice a hit to the economy, I think,” he says.

– Reporting by Kim Landers for AM

Leading ER doctor at Melbourne hospital ‘nervous’ about the next few weeks

A leading emergency department doctor says people continue to struggle to access healthcare as Victoria’s health system strains amid rising COVID hospital admissions.

The head of emergency at Melbourne’s Alfred Hospital says a majority of those presenting to hospital with COVID are unvaccinated.

Doctor Carl Luckhoff told ABC Radio Melbourne there will be a number of challenges over the next few weeks.

“I’m certainly nervous and I think that we should have a healthy level of nervousness about the next few weeks. We’re blessed that we are in a system where we have the ability to plan for any worse case scenario. In reciprocation, we also ask for the community to support us,” he says.

Queensland to hold press conference at 12pm AEST

Queensland Health Minister Yvette D’Ath and Chief Health Officer John Gerrard will be speaking from Brisbane at midday local time.