Australia COVID LIVE updates Cases continue to grow across the nation as states ramp up vaccination measures

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The NSW and Victorian COVID-19 updates are both scheduled for 11am AEST.

The Victorian press conference is set to feature Premier Daniel Andrews, Child Protection and Disability, Ageing and Carers minister Luke Donnellan and COVID-19 commander Jeroen Weimar.

If you can’t see both the Victorian and NSW live streams, please refresh your web browser.

NSW update:

Victorian update:

NSW has recorded 1485 new local cases and three deaths due to COVID-19 or patients with COVID-19 in south-western and Western Sydney.

There are currently 1030 people in hospital with COVID-19 and 175 in intensive care with 72 of those requiring ventilation.

A woman in her 50s with no comorbidities from Western Sydney died at Blacktown Hospital and had one dose of COVID-19 vaccine. A woman in her 70s from south-western Sydney died at Campbelltown Hospital and was not vaccinated, she had significant comorbidities.

And a man in his 70s from south-western Sydney died at Liverpool Hospital. He was not vaccinated and also had comorbidities.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the state has reached 40 per cent double dose vaccination rate and 70 per cent of the population with a first dose.

There were 115,495 tests reported to 8PM last night.

Queensland recorded one new case overnight who had tested negative twice before testing positive yesterday but was already in home quarantine, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced today.

There are about 1000 people in home quarantine in the state and there were also two interstate cases recorded in Queensland, both truck drivers who tested positive in NSW. There are now 16 active cases across the state.

Yesterday 15,880 COVID-19 vaccines were adminstered by Queensland Health, bringing the eligible population coverage 52.7 per cent with at least one dose and 34.14 per cent fully vaccinated.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk is at the centre of a row with the federal government.Credit:Matt Dennien

Premier Palaszczuk said, “now is a window of opportunity to get vaccinated”.

“We have this window of opportunity, Queensland, to get vaccinated,” Ms Palaszczuk said. “It is absolutely imperative that you get vaccinated because this virus is going to pop up sometime in the near future and this is basically our window, our window to get this done.”

NSW Opposition Leader Chris Minns has strongly endorsed the Berejiklian government’s push to reopen as soon as 70 per cent of the state’s adults are fully vaccinated, saying that ending the “huge” toll taken by ongoing lockdowns must be the highest priority.

Mr Minns, who took over the Labor leadership just weeks before the Delta outbreak began, told The Sun-Herald there would be time for a “reckoning” over the government’s mistakes later.

Chris Minns, who will mark three months as Labor leader on Sunday.Credit:Rhett Wyman

“Now’s not the time for that. Now’s the time to let 7.5 million people out of their house, get them back to work and start focusing on the future,” he said. “We can deal with what happened later on, but right now we have to focus on opening up.”

Read more here.

There were 94 new exposure sites added to the list of venues visited by people infected with COVID-19 overnight in the ACT, including the food court at Westfield Woden, several Coles, Aldi, IGA and Woolworths supermarkets as well as two Busy Bees childcare centres.

There are now 335 active exposure times listed by ACT Health.

COVID testing at Exhibition Park in Canberra following cases in the ACT.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

The full list of sites is here.

Father’s Day will be spent in lockdown again for many dads across Australia this year, but that hasn’t stopped Stavrelle Giourousis from making a fuss of dad.

Ms Giourousis and her two daughters, aged 8 and 5, have planned a sweep of “nerf-themed” activities as part of a next-level Father’s Day.

Stavrelle Giourousis and her daughters Georgie ( on the right) 8 years old and Delphi 5 years old with their home made targets and Nerf guns.Credit:Penny Stephens

She has organised a tower of targets made from paper plates, targets for presents that dad has to hit before opening, towers of cups, laser tag and more.

“My husband has three girls in the house, but he’s such a boy’s boy. He loved his G.I Joes as a kid,” Ms Giourousis said.

Read more here.

Minister for Employment Stuart Robert told ABC TV this morning that state borders should open up when the country reaches 80 per cent vaccine coverage despite the increase in cases across NSW and Victoria.

Mr Robert told Insiders host David Speers that the states should stick to the national plan to open borders based on the Doherty Institute report because it said that lockdowns “would be very, very rare and targeted, if indeed they were needed, and if lockdowns were very rare and targeted, ipso facto, you wouldn’t need state borders closed.”

Stuart Roberts said the national plan could change.Credit:

He said the government has a framework that supports opening up state borders at 80 per cent of adults having a double dose of vaccine, but that plan might change.

“Like all things, now that we’ve got the Delta strain, last year we planned for a different strain, so it’s always cautionary if faced with a different problem in this case, a different virus, one should always update what you are looking at,” he said.

“Who wants facts?”

With those three little words, Sharnelle Vella began to carve out a rare space in the contentious age of COVID-19: a voice trusted by thousands every night to deliver them pandemic facts and figures. But it’s not on her professional platform, as state political reporter for Channel Seven, that Vella makes her biggest impact. It’s on Twitter, where her distillation of the endless stream of news and views has become a valued resource amid the cacophony of each day’s details.

“I don’t know why I first wrote ‘Who want facts?’,” says Vella, whose Twitter following has quadrupled to nearly 60,000 in recent months. “I just thought, that’s what I’m going to do, pull these facts together in a thread and just fire them off.”

Channel Seven state political reporter Sharnelle Vella’s reporting on COVID statistics earned praise from the Chief Health Officer via Twitter.Credit:Jason South

Vella is not alone in establishing herself as a voice separate to the fray.

In Victoria, the focus of so much angst, a bunch of voices have marked out this territory, and done it as a form of public service on top of their day jobs.

Read more here.

Resilience. Stoicism. Toughness. Performers need to develop those traits to survive in an industry that can be unpredictable and cruel. But the current COVID-19 lockdowns in Sydney and Melbourne have pushed them to their limits.

“Actors will always put on an optimistic face for the press - that is showbusiness,” said Bruce Spence, chairman of the Actors Benevolent Fund. “[But] many have exhausted whatever savings or available superannuation funds they might have had during the 2020 lockdown.”

Alfie Gledhill relies on food vouchers to survive. Credit:Steven Siewert

Gledhill was in rehearsals for Cry-Baby The Musical, which was scheduled to open at the Sydney Opera House in July, when the production was cancelled because of the lockdown.

“It was very demoralising especially when you’re trying to put everything into learning something you know might not go ahead,” he said.

Read more here.

Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt has reassured Australian parents the government’s decision to vaccinate 12- to 15-year-olds is based on the best health advice and will get kids back to school sooner, after a British expert group recommended against vaccinating healthy adolescents.

A week after Australia approved vaccination of children as young as 12, the UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) said the benefits of doing so were only “marginally greater than the potential known harms”.

Minister for Health and Aged Care Greg Hunt.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

“It is not within the JCVI’s remit to consider the wider societal impacts of vaccination, including educational benefits,” the body noted in a decision that shocked experts and which is at odds with moves by Australia, the US, Canada, Israel and many European countries to vaccinate children 12 and over.

Read more here.

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