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  • Sun. Nov 24th, 2024

Live: Schools reopen as coronavirus restrictions gradually ease

Live: Schools reopen as coronavirus restrictions gradually ease

By Simon Smale

‘We remain an island sanctuary in a difficult world’: Mr Hunt

ABC News

Mr Hunt said: “as of this morning we were at 7,112 cases and sadly 102 lives lost.

“Importantly, 6,509 people have recovered which means the are 501 active cases in Australia.

“Of those, we’re down to 32 cases in hospital and five cases in ICU, all of which are on ventilation.”

Mr Hunt said that Australia’s ventilator capacity was 7,500 and there were concerns that Australia would run out of ventilators as recently as a month and a half ago.

He said there were now five Australians on ventilators.

“All of them obviously in a very serious situation. But in the best of care and we have that capacity which has allowed us to return elective surgery on the path back to normality.”

Mr Hunt said that although Australia was doing well, the rest of the world was struggling.

‘Whilst we’re doing well at home, internationally we have seen an acceleration of cases. In Latin America, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and South Asia. Countries with large populations, with rapidly expanding cases.

“Whilst Australia has made progress, the world is not out of woods. We remain an island sanctuary in a difficult world.”

By Simon Smale

Mr Hunt describes flattening the curve as an ‘extraordinary national achievement’

ABC News

“We now have over five consecutive weeks of days in which the growth rate of new cases in Australia has been less than half a per cent,” Mr Hunt said.

“That’s an extraordinary national achievement and I want to say to Australians, thank you.

“We continue with our border measures and the importance of those is emphasised by the fact that a significant proportion of new cases are those that show up in hotel quarantine.

“Border protection and hotel quarantine is literally saving lives and protecting lives and we’ll continue to be a fundamental part of our national health and strategic defence going forward.”

The Minister said that there are now 585 testing clinics around the country, who have conducted 177,000 tests in the last week, over 25,000 per day.

“So our testing is going up. The cases we’re finding is going down. We’re now at 0.6 per cent positivity over all of the tests we’ve conducted, one of the lowest rates in the world,” Mr Hunt said.

“We have one of the broadest testing regimes in the world and as the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has said, one of the most accurate testing regimes in the world.”

Mr Hunt said 6,027,000 people had now downloaded the CovidSafe app.

By Simon Smale

Health Minister announces third stage of mental health response to COVID-19

ABC News

Health Minister Greg Hunt is announcing the third stage of the Government’s mental health response to COVID-19.

The package is $20 million, including $17 million of grants approved by the Medical Research Future Fund.

The focus is on suicide prevention, with $10.3 million for that, $6.75 million for medicine’s specifically for mental health and $3 million looking very specifically at the mental health impact of COVID-19.

“We must never lose sight of the mental health of Australians,” Mr Hunt said.

By Simon Smale

An unamused Beijing wants Australia to shut up, as it muscles up 

China is using trade as a retaliatory weapon, where once it was the major driving force behind Australian prosperity, .

However, Beijing needs us as much as we need them, at least for the next few years.

By Simon Smale

Coronavirus ‘cover-up’ is China’s Chernobyl, top White House official says 

Tensions between US and China escalate again, with a top White House official comparing China’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

By Simon Smale

You’re thinking too hard about this 

The wind is blowing north-west at 30 km/h while the train is heading south at 50 km/h. If there is a north-facing sneeze, should I get tested?

-Confused

Hi Confused.

In every case, no. If you have symptoms, then absolutely. Because someone sneezes on a train, that’s not grounds to get tested (although if the person who is sneezing isn’t feeling too crash hot then they should definitely go,

In any case, if you’re both in an enclosed train carriage, then the wind direction is irrelevant, as is the (presumably constant) speed you’re travelling…

By Simon Smale

New Zealand stats, in depth

Looking at the New Zealand government Covid-19 stats you linked earlier, it appears that there are significantly more female cases than male, whereas here in Australia’s it’s the other way round. Curious why.

-Curious

Hi Curious,

ABC News

Does this match up with stats around the world?

Well the ABC stats page says that there have been 107 more men than women in Australia, so statistically, that’s not a massive difference.

Where the global stats tell us there is a big discrepancy between men and women is in the deaths, with coronavirus killing twice as many men as women. 

By the way, earlier I didn’t have the updated New Zealand figures. Now they have come in

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