Australia news LIVE Digital pass to allow vaccinated Australians to travel hospitals under pressure as NSW Victorian COVID-19 cases rise

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Casino giant Crown is planning to introduce mandatory coronavirus vaccinations for its staff, while only visitors who have received the jab will be allowed entry.

The ‘no jab, no entry policy’ would apply to Crown Melbourne, Sydney and Perth.

Crown Resorts chief executive Steve McCann said consultations with its employees and the federal government were under way.

Crown Resorts is a major Australian employer.Credit:Will Willitts

“This is about protecting every Australian â€" we want to create a safe environment for people to come to work, and also for our guests to come to enjoy themselves,” Mr McCann said.

Crown employs more 20,000 people across the three sites, with the resorts in Perth and Melbourne the states’ largest private sector employer.

Before the pandemic, more than 30 million people visited the three resorts, according to figures from Crown.

About 60 per cent of its workers are fully vaccinated and the majority of unvaccinated employees said paid leave would be the biggest incentive to get the jab, a survey of its workforce found.

In a press release, Crown said all its employees would be entitled to three hours paid leave for each vaccination they receive.

An extra day of paid sick leave would also be granted if needed, and workers who are already vaccinated would receive a $50 gift voucher.

Crown Melbourne and Sydney are closed because of lockdown restrictions.

The plan follows similar moves from Qantas, Telstra and Virgin Australia to introduce mandatory vaccinations for staff.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said yesterday that businesses can decide who enters their premises and “private businesses ... may make the decision that they don’t want to welcome unvaccinated people”.

Two Sydney public schools will be closed today after new COVID-19 cases were reported.

NSW Education said Cherrybrook Technology High School, in the city’s north-west, and Oxley Park Public School, in western Sydney, will shut until further notice to allow for cleaning and contact tracing.

All staff and students at the schools have been asked to self-isolate and follow NSW Health advice after members of the school communities tested positive to COVID-19.  

“NSW Education will continue to work closely with NSW Health to ensure the health and safety of all students and staff is maintained,” the department said in a statement.

A new digital border pass for international travel is a key plank of the federal government’s plans to remove the ban on Australians leaving the country.

The Digital Passenger Declaration will apply to all travellers entering the country and will be introduced within months after international IT firm Accenture was awarded the tender, estimated to be about $75 million, to automate the process of entering the country.

A federal ban on Australians leaving the country will be dropped as soon as November under the plans.

Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

The pass will replace the physical Incoming Passenger Card and the digital COVID-19 Australian Travel Declaration form. It will collect personal information including passengers’ vaccination status up to 72 hours before boarding and provide the digital authority for vaccinated Australians to travel.

Personal information collected by the pass will be provided to the states and territories for contact tracing and other health reasons.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has said that home quarantine, which is being trialled in South Australia and will also be trialled in NSW, is critical to allowing vaccinated Australians to travel overseas.

At this stage the digital pass will only apply to incoming passengers, but it is critical to the government’s plans to allow vaccinated Australians to travel and return to the country without completing hotel quarantine.

Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews said the DPD would support the “safe reopening of the border at scale when supported by health advice” by providing digitally verified COVID-19 vaccination details.

This will help us to welcome home increasing numbers of Australians and welcome the tourists, travellers, international students, skilled workers and overseas friends and family we’ve all been missing during the pandemic.

Read the full story here.

Meanwhile in Victoria, doctors are warning that life-saving treatments for the state’s cardiac and cancer patients are already being delayed in a situation expected to worsen if hospitals are overrun with coronavirus patients in the coming months.

Across the state, hospitals have paused elective surgeries for all but the most urgent category one and two patients, who are at imminent risk of death without medical intervention, as waiting lists’ blow out to record levels.

Medical staff in the COVID-19 ward at the Austin Hospital.Credit:Justin McManus

Alfred Health cardiologist Associate Professor Dion Stub is becomingly increasingly concerned by the pressure mounting on the healthcare system as a growing number of un-vaccinated Victorians infected with coronavirus fill hospital wards.

Many of Professor Stub’s patients, diagnosed with potentially fatal cardiac diseases, are having their surgeries delayed for months, as resources are diverted to treating coronavirus patients.

This includes several with severe aortic valve disease, a condition that causes a narrowing of the aortic valve opening, rapidly increasing the risk of heart failure and death.

Read the full story here.

As we’ve reported previously, the NSW government has announced a road map to easing restrictions for fully vaccinated people once 70 per cent of people aged 16 and over are vaccinated. That target is expected to be met in mid-October.

But Liam Mannix reports that modelling by a new scientific lobby group has projected the plan may lead to all the state’s intensive care unit beds being full for five weeks over Christmas and almost 1000 people dying from COVID-19.

The modelling is the first release from OzSAGE, a group of high-profile scientists who have come together to call for Australia to change course on reopening.

OzSAGE’s model projects ICU capacity will be exceeded in NSW for five weeks over December and January, with 1169 projected deaths, unless restrictions are reimposed. Credit:Kate Geraghty

OzSAGE’s membership includes some of Australia’s best-known scientists including leading epidemiologist Tony Blakely, Burnet Institute head Brendan Crabb, the Grattan Institute’s Stephen Duckett, the Kirby Institute’s biosecurity program head Raina MacIntyre and ANU vice-chancellor and Nobel-prize winning astronomer Brian Schmidt.

It strongly advocates for Australia to achieve COVID-19 “elimination”, similar to polio or measles, in which there is no sustained community transmission and outbreaks are rare.

This is very different to Australia’s national reopening plan, which calls for a lifting of restrictions and a shift of focus from preventing transmission to preventing death as the vaccination rate rises.

Read the full story here.

Good morning and thank you for reading our live coverage of the day’s events. I’m Michaela Whitbourn and I’ll be anchoring the blog for the first half of the day.

Here’s everything you need to know from the past 24 hours in news:

NSW reported 1257 new local coronavirus cases and seven deaths on Monday. The Yass Valley Council local government area in the NSW Southern Tablelands entered into a two-week lockdown at 12.01am this morning after a case of COVID-19 was confirmed in the area.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian expressed concern yesterday that the virus was entering “pockets of vulnerability” in inner Sydney, as the City of Sydney records comparable daily case numbers to local government areas of concern in the city’s west and south-west. Vaccination rates in some inner-city suburbs â€" notably Darlington, Chippendale and Elizabeth Bay â€" are lower than in surrounding areas. About a third of residents at a Waterloo aged care home for vulnerable men are now among people in the state who have tested positive for COVID-19.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian on Monday.Credit:Nick Moir

Victoria recorded 473 new cases of coronavirus in the community yesterday, as authorities warned that infections are rising on construction sites and in workplaces. Workplace tea rooms are “probably the most dangerous place” for transmission of the virus, COVID-19 response commander Jeroen Weimar said, because it is where people mix and remove their masks. The state is on track to reach its 70 per cent first-dose vaccination target for people aged 16 and over on Friday, ahead of the previously expected date of September 23. The Commonwealth and state governments remain at loggerheads over vaccine supply, with Victorian Health Minister Martin Foley adamant authorities were not told they would receive an additional 400,000 COVID-19 vaccines before Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s announcement on Sunday.

Queensland reported two new local COVID-19 cases linked to the Sunnybank cluster in Brisbane’s south, both of whom were students at St Thomas More College, but authorities believe the situation there is still in hand and have wound back some restrictions on visits to vulnerable facilities.

The ACT recorded 13 new locally acquired cases of COVID-19, at least 10 of whom were in the community while infectious. Western Australia reported no new locally acquired COVID cases, as did Tasmania, South Australia and the Northern Territory.

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