We don’t use our own brains on Covid rules in Queensland any more. We just follow whatever NSW and Victoria decide.
So Queensland will ease Covid isolation rules from Thursday, bringing the state’s rules closer in line with NSW and Victoria, where ‘living with Covid’ is the go.
From the ABC monitoring site, Omicron is not kind to oldies, especially males:
Lock down hard or you’ll be stuck where you are until Christmas, NSW has been told by the Melbourne Burnet Institute, who did the modelling which helped Victoria escape its long lockdown in 2020.
Let me say at the outset that I agree with Professor Catherine Bennett, Deakin University’s Chair in Epidemiology, who said in an article in The Age that:
“I do think that the routes of transmission that they’re seeing in NSW should guide the interventions, not just putting things in place because they’ve been used elsewhere,” she said.
Back on June 24 Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant told us Why a snap COVID-19 lockdown won’t work for Sydney’s Bondi outbreak. The Delta variant was already well and truly abroad and could not be reined in by a three-day lockdown like those other states had used.
Less than three weeks later with all of Sydney plus some adjacent areas locked down, harder than before, new cases rose from 11 to over 100. The virus was winning in the community:
The New Scientist reports on a study in the UK where researchers grouped Covid_19 symptoms into six clusters:
1 Flu-like symptoms, no fever
Headache, loss of smell, cough, sore throat and aches and pains, but no fever. Around 1.5 per cent of this group will go on to require breathing support in hospital.
2 Flu-like symptoms with fever
Similar to group 1, plus a loss of appetite and fever.
3 Gastrointestinal
Diarrhoea alongside loss of smell and appetite, headache, sore throat and chest pain. Typically, no cough. Continue reading Sundry virus update
The word “slam” is used from time to time by the media reporting politics. Thus back on 7 September we had Scott Morrison in Coronavirus Australia: Gloves off as Scott Morrison slams Premier Daniel Andrews on road map.
However, if you read the article Morrison is not telling Andrews what to do. So as recently as last Thursday Morrison could credibly stand in Cairns next to Qld LNP leader Deb Frecklington saying that he accepts that state leaders make the decisions on COVID management. It’s just that he’s inclined to refer to ‘Federal standards’ that have not actually been agreed to by the constituent states of the federation.
All the while Victorian federal ministers have indeed slammed Andrews on quite a regular basis for some months. Continue reading Dan is done with political sniping
Unfortunately the business of opening international travel has been marred by the politics of the definition of ‘hotspots’.
PM Scott Morrison has announced that an agreement has been reached at National Cabinet and with New Zealand that New Zealanders can enter New South Wales and the Northern Territory without quarantine from 16 October, provided they have not come from an area designated as a Covid hotspot by the Australian Government. This announcement was made via media release from the PM and five other Commonwealth ministers.
It should be noted the New Zealand is not reciprocating. Said NZ persons upon returning to NZ would have to quarantine.
It’s more than curious that Tasmania on the same day announced that it plans to open up the low risk states which:
I want to be clear, that if at any time the situation changes in these states and the advice is that the risk is too high – then I won’t hesitate to change this decision.
We will review the situation in New South Wales over the next week and border restrictions will remain in place for the foreseeable future with Victoria until we are satisfied that the risk has reduced to a lower level.
When I started this post on 17 July I wrote:
PM Scott Morrison will tell you that ‘aggressive suppression’ is the way to go, and that ‘elimination’ would break the economy. He also said that we need a few people getting sick and dying to keep our minds on the job.
Scotty from Marketing did not say it quite that way, but that is what he meant.
Continue reading COVID suppression vs elimination: beware of hot air!
That was the AFR’s irrepressible cartoonist David Rowe opposite Laura Tingle’s weekly column Crisis spins from COVID-19 to koalas in the premier state also published at ABC Online as The Nationals’ dummy spit over koalas is another sign of their ongoing struggle for relevance.
The big news overnight has been the discovery six new coronavirus cases linked to the Brisbane Youth Detention Centre at Wacol, which for people elsewhere, is between Brisbane and Ipswich to the west. It’s near where the three young women lived who lied and gamed the system returning from Melbourne making Premier Palaszczuk ‘absolutely furious’
Here’s what we know so far about Queensland’s coronavirus outbreak in the Brisbane Youth Detention Centre posted this afternoon by the ABC.
Initially we had 77-year-old prison supervisor who worked five shifts last week while infected, but asymptomatic until just a headache in the last two days. Now suddenly we have four more prison workers, and two associates infected. Continue reading Could Queensland outbreak have been avoided?
During the last week the most interesting piece of information I heard about dealing with the coronavirus was not who is to blame for the mess in nursing homes, or who let the passengers off the Ruby Princess, it was a short interview of Professor Michael Toole, epidemiologist at Burnet Institute, by Patricia Karvelas – Unknown COVID sources have experts worried.
Toole lays down some markers for effective testing, tracing and isolating.
He said that after a test, the results should come back and 90% of the contacts should be traced and found within 48 hours at a maximum. Continue reading COVID-19: Time is of the essence
For political reasons, I think no-one will be using the words, but Victoria has opted for virus elimination rather than suppression, slamming the state shut for six weeks. Premier Dan Andrews says the current setting are not working, they might work if they were continued for six months, but they might not.
Victoria has declared a State of disaster, which allows greater police powers, about which more tomorrow, which will last for the next six weeks. Continue reading Victoria goes for virus elimination
And she has every right to be.
Two of the cases — both 19-year-old women — tested positive after a recent trip to Victoria and did not go into quarantine. Continue reading Premier Palaszczuk is ‘absolutely furious’
Is this man scary?
Actually he was not wearing a mask when he briefed the media that 9 out of 10 Victorians were not getting tested immediately when they showed symptoms. Further, 53 per cent of people did not self-isolate while awaiting results: Continue reading Why do Victorians avoid the virus test?
