Australia COVID LIVE updates NSW Police open probe into lockdown protests federal government to buy 85m Pfizer booster doses

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Premier Gladys Berejiklian, NSW Health’s Dr Jeremy McAnulty and NSW Police Deputy Commissioner Gary Worboys will provide an update on COVID-19 at 11.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has slammed the thousands of anti-lockdown protestors who took to the city on Saturday.

“Can I say how absolutely disgusted I was. It broke my heart,” she said. “Millions and millions of people across our state are doing the right thing and it just broke my heart that people had such a disregard for their fellow citizens.”

“Each of those people who protested illegally - I’m sure have loved ones. They are going to go home and risk passing that virus onto the most closest people to them.”

Police charged 57 people and issued 90 fines after crowds clashed with dozens of officers as demonstrations converged on major cities across Australia on Saturday.

Two women in NSW have died overnight, while the state recorded 141 cases of community transmission in the 24 hours to 8pm last night.

Of these locally acquired cases, 87 are linked to a known case or cluster â€" 71 are household contacts and 16 are close contacts â€" and the source of infection for 54 cases is under investigation.

Sixty-five cases were in isolation throughout their infectious period and 24 cases were in isolation for part of their infectious period. Thirty-eight cases were infectious in the community, and the isolation status of 14 cases remains under investigation.

No new cases were acquired overseas in the 24 hours to 8pm last night. The total number of cases in NSW since the beginning of the pandemic is now 7,603.

There have been 2,081 locally acquired cases reported since 16 June 2021, when the first case in the Bondi cluster was reported.

The deaths related to a woman in her 70s and a woman in her 30s with no pre-existing conditions, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said.

“If anybody think this is a disease just affecting older people, please think again,” she said. ” I want to extend my heartfelt condolences to those families, their loved ones who are grieving today, but please note that younger people without pre-existing conditions can also fall victim to this cruel disease.”

A man who flew from Sydney to Ballina has now been identified as the index case for the most recent virus case in Queensland.

The man was picked up from Ballina airport on July 14 by the flight attendant who later tested positive for the disease.

She then drove him into Queensland.Acting Premier Steven Miles said because of that, they are no longer concerned about the flights the woman worked on on July 11 and 12, with those passengers to be contacted and told they are in the clear.

Because the man was tested for Covid in NSW, he will count towards that state’s numbers, not Queensland.

Queensland recorded five new cases of COVID on Sunday, but all were detected in hotel quarantine.

Queensland Deputy Premier Steven Miles, Health Minister Yvette D’Ath and Chief Health Officer Dar Jeannette Young provide a COVID-19 update.

Primary schools should be considered an “essential industry” and could reopen safely even before community transmission of COVID-19 returns to zero, health experts say, as students across Sydney head into their third week of remote learning with no end in sight.

Families report that while some students have found it easy to slot back into the same remote learning systems they had last year, for others it is harder the second time around and the novelty has well and truly worn off.

Francesca Pinzone and James Barron with their children, Luca, 9, Noah, 7, and Allegra, 5, homeschooling in Randwick.Credit:Janie Barrett

Schools are closed as part of the wider Sydney lockdown until at least July 30. Most children are learning from home remotely, while the children of essential workers and others who cannot learn from home are permitted to be on site.

Schools have varied in their messaging to encourage parents to keep their children at home, as they try to have only a skeleton staff on school premises each day.

Read more here.

You might have noticed this week that Victorian health authorities have introduced a new metric to track how effective the state’s lockdown is going: the number of cases who were infectious while in the community.

At the beginning of this week, Victorians were told that 92.31 per cent of Monday’s cases were in the community while infectious, meaning more than nine out of ten people had not gone into isolation during their infectious period.

Those positives not being in isolation could have occurred for several reasons, including that the lockdown might not have started at the time they became infectious. But it did mean they could have been visiting places, generating new exposure sites and potentially spreading the virus to people outside their close household contacts.

We’ve seen that number come down gradually over the past week. This is a breakdown of the per cent of cases infectious in the community:

Tuesday: 30.77%
Wednesday: 27.27%
Thursday: 7.69%
Friday: 21.43%
Saturday: 16.67%
Sunday: 0%

What’s encouraging about the numbers released on Sunday morning is that not one of the cases was out in the community while infectious. This means the only people that could have been infected are those household or workplace contacts (for people who are essential workers) who can be easily tracked down and isolate, or who have already been isolating themselves.

This graph by data website COVIDbase Australia does a good job of contrasting the number of positive cases against the number of people in the community while infectious, and how it’s gradually dropped throughout the week.

It’s also the metric, 100 per cent isolating during their infectious period, that Victorian Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton often mentioned as an ideal precondition of Victorians exiting lockdown as planned at midnight on Tuesday.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has described protests in Melbourne and Sydney against lockdown laws on Saturday as “stupidity writ-large”.

Speaking on Sky News Australia on Sunday morning, Mr Frydenberg said the images of protesters clashing with police were “shocking” and people were rightly concerned of the implications.

“Those protesters should be condemned, for not just breaking the health orders and therefore breaking the law, but for putting in danger their fellow Australians,” he said.

“Those protests have no place in the middle of this crisis, in the middle of this pandemic.“

Thousands of people took to the streets in Sydney to protest lockdown restrictions.Credit: Brook Mitchell

Mr Frydenberg said the government’s acquisition of 85 million Pfizer doses for booster next year was a significant development and welcomed revised medical advice from Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation strongly recommending all adults in NSW to be vaccinated with whichever type of vaccine is available.

He said further vaccines would made made available to NSW however the changed advice was “extremely significant”

“It’s a no-brainer, just get vaccinated,” Mr Frydenberg said.

“What we now have is the spread of the virus in NSW and the dangers that poses to people’s health. If you get COVID you have a one in one-hundred chance of dying, the international experience tells us that,” he said.

“From complications to the AstraZeneca vaccine it’s one in a million.”

Two men have been charged with allegedly striking a police horse following an anti-lockdown protest that shut down the city on Saturday.

NSW Police have set up a strike force comprising of 22 detectives who worked through the night to track down more than 3500 protesters who breached coronavirus restrictions and marched through Sydney’s CBD to protest widespread lockdowns in NSW.

During the operation, officers were assaulted, and police horses were struck and pushed.

Following the protest, Strike Force Seasoned was established to investigate persons who committed offences associated with the unauthorised protest and breach of Public Health Orders.

Read more here.

NSW Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant will appear in a TikTok livestream Q&A event this evening to answer questions relating to the pandemic NSW and vaccinations.

TikTok Australia and New Zealand Global Public Policy Director Brent Thomas the company was committed to sharing useful and credible information.

“At TikTok, we want Australians to get back to doing what they love - safely. We know there’s a lot we can’t do right now, but listening to our trusted health experts and doing the right thing is one way we can all help each other during these difficult times,” Mr Thomas said in a statment.

“As part of this discussion, Dr Kerry Chant will be busting myths, giving her expert tips on combatting COVID-19, clarifying rules, as well as delving into some of the most burning questions from our community.

“Our goal for the Ask Dr Chant: LIVE Q&A initiative is simple: provide accurate and credible information on how to combat COVID-19 and highlight the importance of getting vaccinated from a trusted expert and share in a bit of levity while at we’re at it - because we could use a laugh right now.”

The event will be broadcast on TikTok Australia’s account tonight at 7.00pm

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