Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said on Friday that the lockdown would end at 6pm on Friday for the Local Government Areas (LGAs) of Noosa, the Sunshine Coast, Ipswich, Logan, Redlands, the Gold Coast, Scenic Rim, Lockyer Valley, Somerset and Townsville. The areas emerging from lockdown will have some restrictions in place for at least the next two weeks, and mask-wearing will be required when in public.The Brisbane City Council and Moreton Bay LGAs would remain in lockdown for another 24 hours, Ms Palaszczuk said.“Now we will come back early tomorrow morning, once our contact tracers get on top of this and we will look at the case numbers overnight,” she said.“I want to thank everyone for doing the right thing but as you can see, we’ve just got a situation at the moment that has just come in and we really need to give the people, our contact tracers, the time to do that.”One of the new cases is the partner of the Qatar Airway check-in counter staff member reported on Thursday, but health authorities were concerned by two other cases who were not linked to one of the many known clusters plaguing the state. The pair are a mother and a daughter who live in Carindale but were active in busy areas, including West End and the city while infectious.Chief health officer Dr Jeannette Young bluntly urged residents “don’t leave Brisbane”.“At this stage I don’t have any information on how they’re linked to any other cases,” she told reporters on Friday.“So we will work that through today. They are a mother and daughter who live in a household so we are checking the other people in that household to see if they are positive of course and we have started contact tracing.“Please don’t leave Brisbane or the Moreton Bay to go anywhere else. I don’t want to spread this virus beyond where it currently is.”The state was delicately poised given it is in the grips of five clusters — a woman who works at a check-in counter at the Brisbane Airport, the Portuguese restaurant, Virgin Australia flight attendant, the mine cluster from the Northern Territory, and the 19-year-old receptionist infected by a returned traveller quarantining at the Prince Charles Hospital.NED-3869-Covid-19-Exposure-Sites-QldVICTORIA RECORDS ZERO NEW LOCAL CASESVictoria has recorded no new cases of Covid-19 on Friday.There were three cases recorded in international travellers in hotel quarantine.There were 19,470 doses of the vaccine administered across the state in the past 24 hours and 24,726 tests taken.It comes as Victoria tightened its border with NSW overnight declaring green zone areas as orange zones from Friday morning.The Department of Health issued the alert on Thursday night, saying the decision was made out “abundance of caution” and on the advice of health officials as NSW posted 24 new infections. Alice Springs was added to the list of banned locations, deemed a retrospective orange zone from June 25.The backdated reclassification meant anyone from the town who travelled to Victoria on or after June 25 must get tested immediately.Victorian health authorities will front the media later on Friday. NEW JAB-TO-FLY PLAN AS PM DECLARES WHEN AUS COULD BE VACCINATED Prime Minister Scott Morrison will seek to secure agreement from state and territory leaders on a plan to open up travel for vaccinated Australians in a critical meeting of National Cabinet.Mr Morrison will meet with premiers and chief ministers on Friday, and will seek to set vaccination thresholds to eliminate lockdowns and give domestic and international travel exemptions for vaccinated Australians, The Australian reports. Queensland and Victoria will demand drastic cuts to international arrivals at what is expected to be a tense rounds of discussions.The Commonwealth has not ruled out the measure, with more than 12 million Australians placed into lockdown in a bid to contain the rapidly spreading Delta variant of Covid-19.Speaking outside The Lodge on Friday morning, Mr Morrison said he was encouraged by Thursday’s vaccination numbers — a daily record for the nation.Almost 162,000 doses were administered, to take the total to 7.8 million doses of AstraZeneca and Pfizer delivered in five months.He said “at that pace”, Australia could be vaccinated “by the end of the year”.“So today we just need to focus on the job for the Australian people and I have every confidence that the National Cabinet will do just that,” Mr Morrison said.He added, he expected the states to work with the federal government despite their recent campaigns to cap the number of international travellers.“I’m very confident that we will keep working together for what Australia needs to take us through what has been one of the most difficult times in our history. But National Cabinet has done it before and I’m sure we will do it again today,” he said.VIC, QLD TO PUSH TO CUT INTERNATIONAL ARRIVALSVictorian Premier Daniel Andrews has argued the threat of lockdowns will remain as long as international arrivals are funnelled through hotel quarantine, the source of various leaks since the pandemic began. He will take that argument to national cabinet on Friday morning. The demand to cut back on international arrivals, backed by Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, sets up a tense meeting of national cabinet on Friday morning after the federal government accused Queensland of “extremist” rhetoric on the AstraZeneca vaccine.Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews poured cold water on cutting arrivals on Wednesday, saying the “first response should not be to close down our borders”. But her colleague, Finance Minister Simon Birmingham, left the door open to the idea, noting the Commonwealth had already drastically reduced international movement throughout the pandemic. “We have also shown a willingness to tighten it even further, such as during the India outbreak, if the risk factor is greater. We will always continue to look at that evidence, and work with the state and territories,” he told reporters on Thursday.“There is no perfect model or approach.”Mr Andrews, the first premier to go public with the idea earlier this week, had earlier insisted on a cut of 75 to 80 per cent while the vaccination was rolled out.He said Australia lacked a “full toolbox” to combat an outbreak, with not enough Australians vaccinated to handle the highly transmissible variant. “We know where it’s coming; it’s leaking out of hotel quarantine, because hotels are not built as infection control places. They’re built to look after tourists,” he said.Just under 35,000 Australians were stranded overseas as of late April, and Mr Andrews conceded it would be “desperately sad” for those told they could not return. “But if you’re coming home for those compassionate reasons, it makes it much more likely that there will be an outbreak, and we’ll have to lock everybody down, then you’ve got to make that tough call,” he said.No more than 1000 arrivals per week were permitted to land in Melbourne, and no more than 1300 in Brisbane. That was dwarfed by NSW’s intake of 530 per day, or 3010 per week.The federal government has lauded NSW for doing the “heavy lifting” on hotel quarantine, and Premier Gladys Berejiklian said on Wednesday international arrival caps were a matter for the Commonwealth. But Ms Palaszczuk has demanded a 50 per cent reduction in international arrivals, claiming her state’s systems had been overwhelmed. “We are down to the final number of beds. We are now searching for additional hotels for our hotel quarantine,” she said on Thursday.“Our hotels were not built to contain it and obviously you see that our hospitals are not built to contain it either.”NED-4128-Share-of-the-population-fully-vaccinated-against-Covid-19FIVE MORE BLOOD CLOT CASES LINKED TO AZFive new cases of blood clots have been linked to the AstraZeneca vaccine, bringing the nation’s total to 69 cases out of 4.8 million doses.The Therapeutic Goods Administration has reported on Thursday that two cases are “definitely” linked to the vaccine, involving a 52-year-old woman from WA and a 59-year-old woman from Victoria.A 64-year-old woman and two men, aged 77 and 83, from NSW are “probably” linked, the TGA said.“Five additional cases of blood clots with low blood platelets have been assessed as thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS) likely to be linked to the AstraZeneca vaccine,” it said.“When assessed using the United Kingdom (UK) case definition, two were confirmed and three were deemed probable TTS.“This brings the total number of cases of TTS to 69 out of 4.8 million doses to date.”NSW LOCAL CASES UP BY 24New South Wales recorded 24 new locally acquired cases of Covid-19 on Thursday. Half were in isolation for their entire infectious period, but NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said some were working in the community while symptomatic. “The fact that half was in the community while infectious is a cause of concern,” Ms Berejiklian said.“We can’t afford to have people continue to have the virus going about their business.“In too many examples we are seeing workers who are leaving the house with symptoms or going to work with symptoms and then inadvertently as they are going about shopping or other activity, they are passing it onto others.”The new cases, recorded up to 8pm on Wednesday night, include a student nurse that spent four days working across two Sydney hospitals.Health officials have raced to track down and isolate more than 100 of her close contacts.A household contact of this nurse is also included in Thursday’s tally.Two new cases are linked to the West Hoxton birthday party, bringing the total number of cases acquired through the birthday party to 41, including 27 people who acquired their infection at the party and 14 close contacts.NED-4088-NSW-Locally-acquired-Covid-19-graphNSW chief health officer Dr Kerry Chant said 17 of the 24 cases were linked to known cases but seven are under investigation.One new case was linked to Crossways Hotel while no new cases were linked to Christo’s Pizzeria in Paddington. Another new case was also associated with Joh Bailey Double Bay and one was linked to Lyfe Café Bondi Beach. NSW Covid Exposure SitesNT CASES GROWThe Northern Territory recorded one new locally acquired case of COVID-19 on Thursday.The case, a man, was a close contact of the initial miner who tested positive, has been in quarantine at Howard Springs throughout his infectious period.Lockdowns imposed on Greater Darwin and Alice Springs continue.The positive case is a man from the Tanami gold mine who was a close contact of the original case.The outbreak from the gold mine has grown to 12 people, while Chief Minister Michael Gunner said the man left the mine on Friday, June 25.He was transferred to the Howard Springs quarantine facility as a high-risk contact.NT chief health officer Hugh Heggie said contact tracers were pouring over CCTV footage from Alice Springs airport, where the original case passed through on the way back to Adelaide, and contacting as many potentially exposed people as possible.He travelled to Adelaide on June 26 and returned a negative Covid, test but his wife and three of his four children have since tested positive, the chief minister said.South Australian authorities later confirmed follow up testing revealed the miner was in fact Covid-positive. It is unclear why his initial test was negative.“The person who tested positive when they got to Adelaide had spent seven hours in the airport; that’s a lot of CCTV to look at in terms of the people from the cafe, indeed how just how close they actually had come within the (man) and so that takes the time,” Dr Heggie said.“When they identify who they are and they will contact them.”The case plunged Alice Springs into a three-day lockdown on Wednesday.The lockdown will last 72 hours and began at 1pm local time.NED-4108-Infected-Miners-travels‘HUGE RELIEF’ AS SA RECORDS NO NEW CASESSouth Australia reported no new coronavirus cases on Thursday after a long streak of no local infections was broken earlier in the week. Premier Stephen Marshall said the announcement would come as a “huge relief” to the state.“We’re very pleased with the way that things are going at the moment,” he said. It comes after the state recorded its first local Covid-19 infections in 211 days on Tuesday when five new cases emerged.A miner, who worked at the Northern Territory mine where positive virus cases popped up earlier this week, tested negative on returning to South Australia before turning positive.His wife and three of his four children, all of who had been quarantining at home since Saturday, also tested positive.NED-1859 State of our borders
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