Australia news LIVE NSW records 1542 new local COVID-19 cases nine deaths Victoria records 334 new local COVID-19 cases one death

Key postsHide key posts

Latest

1 of 3

Oldest

Victorian Roads Minister Ben Carroll and COVID-19 response commander Jeroen Weimar are providing a coronavirus update.

Watch that press conference below.

Meanwhile, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and her team have finished providing their daily COVID-19 update.

We’ll have the playback version with you as soon as possible.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian says she believes young people will have had sufficient opportunity to be fully vaccinated by the time the state reopens.

Currently, the majority of people aged 40 and under in NSW are not fully vaccinated, with many only gaining access to the Pfizer vaccine in the past month and others deciding to receive AstraZeneca with a longer dose interval.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian on Friday.Credit:James Brickwood

Some practitioners administering Pfizer doses in recent weeks have also used an eight-week dose interval, due to supply concerns.

Asked if she was concerned that numbers of hospitality and retail workers in the state â€" mostly younger people â€" would not be fully vaccinated by the time the state starts easing restrictions when 70 per cent of adults are fully vaccinated, the Premier said she believed access had been adequate in Sydney.

“There is not a single young person in a huge chunk of Greater Sydney who has not been offered the vaccine,” she said.

With daily dose rates declining in NSW, the Premier admitted there was a “lumpiness in supply, especially for younger people” in September, and the state was also waiting for the big group of people who received their first dose a few weeks ago to become eligible for their second.

Victoria’s COVID-19 commander Jeroen Weimar does not believe Melbourne’s outbreak is on the same trajectory as Sydney’s despite growing case numbers.

Mr Weimar said the focus was on containing widespread transmission in the north and western suburbs, but believes that holding onto restrictions for the time being would stop Melbourne from catching up to Sydney’s caseload.

Victorian COVID-19 response commander Jeroen Weimar. Credit:Justin McManus

“I think it is still in our hands,” Mr Weimar said.

“We have it within us, if we grip this up, stick with those directions, stick with those difficult things we’re being asked to do for a relatively short period of time.”

Premier Daniel Andrews has previously acknowledged lockdown restrictions will not be able to bring the Delta outbreak down to zero and has shifted his focus to vaccinations.

Mr Weimar said people in metropolitan Melbourne can go to any vaccination centre within Melbourne, but could not travel into the regions.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has faced a number of questions from reporters after announcing there would no longer be a daily press conference about the state’s COVID-19 response.

From Monday, a video will be uploaded by NSW Health detailing the case numbers and vaccination rates.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian on Friday.Credit:James Brickwood

Ms Berejiklian said “the public knows we are working on the case 24/7” but she did not think having a daily press conference was sustainable.

“I will turn up when I need to but to expect the leader of the government indefinitely to do this every day means that I am not doing my job properly,” she said.

The decision comes after the Premier, informed by modelling by the Burnet Institute, flagged the highest case numbers in the state were expected to occur in the next fortnight. Hospitalisations are expected to reach a peak in October.

The Premier said she did not believe daily press conferences should continue until after that peak is reached.

“We will never know exactly when that is,” she said. “I can assure the people of this state and they can judge me on my record, whenever I need to speak directly to the public, I absolutely will.”

She said she believed scaling back the daily press conference was a part of living with the virus. Daily case numbers will continue to be published, although Ms Berejiklian was unclear on when this may stop, first saying this would occur “until at least 70 per cent double dose” vaccination rate and then saying it would continue “indefinitely”.

“What we need to do is all of us have to start accepting that we need to live with COVID because COVID would be around for three or four years.”

Victoria’s COVID-19 response commander Jeroen Weimar says the state should “smash” its initial expectation of vaccinating 70 per cent of eligible people with at least one dose by September 23.

“We think we’ll smash that by quite a few days,” Mr Weimar said.

So far, 64 per cent of Victorians have had one dose of a vaccine.

Mr Weimar said 71,000 people made COVID-19 vaccine bookings yesterday and another 10,000 AstraZeneca doses were available over the next seven days.

Road Safety Minister Ben Carroll said Premier Daniel Andrews and Chief Health Officer were working “day in, day out” on a yet-to-be announced road map.

“We’re focused on getting vaccination rates up. We know that more vaccinations is the best thing we can do when it comes to combating the delta variant,” Mr Carroll said.

He repeated that Melburnians should not be travelling to the regions to get a vaccination.

The Deputy Premier and Education Minister James Merlino is working with schools on a plan to get students back in the classroom, but Mr Carroll would not provide a date to make announcements.

The number of COVID-19 patients or suspected patients who have been transported by NSW Ambulance since the start of the outbreak hit 5900 yesterday, up from 2500 a fortnight ago.

“In just two weeks, this load has doubled on the organisation from the previous two months,” said NSW Ambulance Commissioner Dominic Morgan.

NSW Ambulance Commissioner Dominic Morgan on Friday.Credit:James Brickwood

“It is a challenging time for our paramedics and what I am pleased about is that we can clearly see the impact of increased vaccination clearly damping the burden for us.”

Dr Morgan said a control unit, which allowed for real-time data to be shared between Ambulance, emergency departments and hospital bed and intensive care availability, was being established.

“To the best of our knowledge, this level of integration has ever been achieved on this scale anywhere in the world,” he said.

A total of 190 new paramedics will hit the road by the end of the month. There are currently 1156 COVID-19 cases in hospital, including 207 people in intensive care.

NSW Deputy Chief Health Officer Marianne Gale said health authorities continued to be most concerned about the spread of the virus in Fairfield, Bankstown, Greenacre, Liverpool, punchbowl, Auburn, Guildford and Merrylands.

As reported earlier this week, there are also concerns about low vaccination rates and rising cases in the City of Sydney and Inner West.

Health authorities are concerned by COVID-19 sewage detections at the Tamworth and Lightning Ridge sewage treatment plants in western NSW, Glen Innes sewage treatment plant in the New England region, Culburra Beach and Moruya sewage treatment plants in southern NSW.

Victorian authorities have provided more details about the state’s recently reported COVID-19 death.

A man in his 70s from Coburg died with COVID-19 on Thursday.

“Our thoughts go out to that gentleman’s family and friends,” government minister Ben Carroll said.

“This is tragic news.”

There are now 127 people in hospital, up by 16 from yesterday’s update, 90 per cent of whom have not had any vaccine. The other 10 per cent have had just one jab.

Nobody in hospital in Victoria has been fully vaccinated.

Mr Carroll, who is Public Transport Minister, has also provided details about a V/Line train driver who tested positive, forcing staff into isolation and disrupting services.

Twenty V/Line services have been disrupted so far, but Mr Carroll expects about 100 to be disrupted today in total. Five coaches are serving the network in their place.

As reported, there have been nine COVID-19 deaths in the Greater Sydney region since yesterday’s update.

Two of these people â€" a man in his 70s from the city’s south and a man in his 60s from the west â€" died at home.

The other deaths were:

A man in his 70s from south-east Sydney who died at Prince of Wales Hospital

A woman in her 40s from south-west Sydney who died at Liverpool Hospital

A woman in her 50s from the Central Coast who died at Gosford Hospital

A man in his 60s from western Sydney who died at Royal North Shore Hospital

A woman in her 80s from western Sydney who died at Ryde Hospital

A man in his 30s from the Nepean-Blue Mountains area who died at Nepean Hospital

A man in his 50s from south-west Sydney who died at Liverpool Hospital

“All of these individuals had underlying health conditions,” NSW Deputy Chief Health Officer Marianne Gale said.

“Three were fully vaccinated, three had had a single dose of a vaccine and three were unvaccinated.

“As we have seen today, as well, a number of those two individuals were younger people and it is an important reminder for everybody in the community of the need to be vaccinated, to be aware that COVID-19 causes serious illness, hospitalisations, ICU admission, and death.”

NSW reported 1542 new local coronavirus cases and nine deaths on Friday, as Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced she would no longer be doing daily press conferences.

“Sunday will be the last day we officially do a press conference in this way,” Ms Berejiklian said.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian at Friday’s COVID-19 update. Credit:James Brickwood

“From Monday at 11am, Health will provide a daily health update [via an online video] and myself and [Health Minister Brad] Hazzard or any other relevant Minister will present to the community on a needs basis.”

The nine deaths recorded since yesterday’s update include a man in his 30s from Nepean Blue Mountains who died at Nepean Hospital.

“As the modelling we released [this week] indicated, we are expecting the peak number of cases to happen in the next week or so,” Ms Berejiklian said.

Some “tweaks” have been made to the slight easing of rules around outdoor recreation for the fully vaccinated, due to come into force on Monday.

In local government areas of concern, people who are fully vaccinated in a household may now gather for two hours for outdoor recreation, in addition to exercise.

Children aged under 12 will not be included in the five-person cap for outdoor gatherings of fully vaccinated people outside of these areas.

The Premier said 76.4 per cent of the NSW adult population had now received a first dose and 43.6 per cent were fully vaccinated. These figures, previously announced at press conferences, will now be published by NSW Health on its website.

Some good news for residents of NSW-Queensland border communities today, with Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announcing a return of the existing border bubble for the local government areas coming out of lockdown tomorrow.

Ms Palaszczuk said this meant students and essential workers â€" who are unable to work from home â€" would again be able to cross the border between the 12 NSW local government from 1am on Monday.

“So it’s basically going back to that border bubble that we had previously,” Ms Palaszczuk said.

She said authorities on both sides would be monitoring the situation closely, as NSW had flagged a return to lockdown for those local government areas should they record a COVID-19 case.

Only one person has been fined for travelling from Melbourne to a regional city without permission after country Victoria took steps out of lockdown from midnight.

Greater Melbourne and Shepparton remain in lockdown.

Deputy Commissioner Rick Nugent told radio station 3AW one person had been fined overnight.

“Other than that it was very, very quiet. We were not seeing the exodus of people, which is fantastic,” Mr Nugent said.

About 200 officers are policing the roads, intercepting cars and using automatic number plate recognition to stop Melburnians in lockdown from travelling to the regions.

Most of the people travelling were essential workers â€" doctors, nurses, food suppliers â€" who have permits to travel.

Booze buses have also been deployed at random checkpoints as part of the police operation and officers will be monitoring tourist areas such as the surf coast over the weekend.

Police are also checking identification of people on V/Line trains and in venues in regional towns.

The force has become aware of Melburnians booking vaccine appointments in the regions, which Mr Nugent said was “clearly not a valid reason” to leave the city.

He said it was “disappointing” another anti-lockdown was planned for Saturday.

“I understand everyone’s frustration but at the moment you could end up with a super-spreading event and that’s the last thing we want,” Mr Nugent told 3AW.

“During a pandemic it is just straight out not lawful. So we need to take action to prevent it in the first instance and ensure compliance with the [Chief Health Officer’s] directions if it does occur.”

Latest

1 of 3

Oldest

Share this post