Sydney’s Swelling Covid Outbreak Risks Scuppering Christmas Bloomberg 12/21/2020
(Bloomberg)
Sydney’s 5 million residents are being urged to curb activities over the next few days to avoid fanning a coronavirus outbreak that’s closed state borders and threatens to scupper Christmas festivities.
A new health order from Monday limits gatherings in homes and entertainment venues across metropolitan Sydney for at least three days, while New South Wales state health officials work to trace the source and contain a growing cluster involving 83 people.
“We’re on a precipice,” said Marylouise McLaws, professor of epidemiology, hospital infection and infectious diseases control at the University of New South Wales. A seven-day, Sydney-wide “stay at home” order may be necessary to arrest the spread of the virus, and it would be prudent for residents to curtail holiday festivities if not cancel them altogether, she said.
Air staff flying into other states haven t been given any special treatment
It s also revealed 900 foreign diplomats have been allowed to isolate at home
It comes after 13 airline crew members broke self-isolation earlier this month
Thousands of international air crew have been allowed to catch Ubers to a hotel of their own choosing to quarantine in NSW, while those landing anywhere else receive no special treatment.
Hundreds of foreign diplomats have also been given permission to skip hotel quarantine and self-isolate at home, despite two breaching the rules and nine testing positive to coronavirus.
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Thirteen airline crew broke self-isolation, left their hotel and headed out for a night on the town after arriving in Sydney on December 5.
The 18-year-old said he stayed up past midnight on Saturday and described opening the portal as ânerve wrackingâ because he didnât know what score to expect.
He said he was very happy and elated to share his score with his family, who helped him through this unprecedented year.
âMy family were all so happy for me and have offered me so much support over the last few years, especially this year with everything that has happened,â he said. The Rockhampton Grammar School s Sansuka De Silva is one of 30 students across Queensland to receive an ATAR of 99.95. Picture: Aden Stokes
AusKidTalk database of Australian children s speech aims to improve voice recognition software
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Children aged three to 12 are giving voice to the AusKidTalk collection.
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Researchers are aiming to record the voices of hundreds of Australian children in a bid to create a unique database that could help people with speech problems and improve technology.
Key points:
Universities are recording children aged three to 12 for the database
The recordings will be used to develop automatic speech recognition systems to support education and speech therapy
The AusKidTalk project, funded by the Australian Research Council, is collecting recordings of children aged three to 12.