National cabinet will meet on Friday to consider tighter precautions on international arrivals over fears a new mutant coronavirus strain will spread from the UK.
The new variant raging across London appears to be more infectious than previous strains of coronavirus, with one in 30 people infected in the city compared with one in 50 across England. There is also a small but real worry the UK government s decision to lengthen the time between delivering the two required doses of a vaccine could spawn a further mutant strain.
So far, the new UK strain has been found in two people in quarantine in NSW, five in Victoria and one in WA.
NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant, who also sits on AHPPC, says while pre-flight testing could be useful in some circumstances, people who returned a negative result could still become infectious.
There is nothing people like less than being told what to do by out-of-towners.
Melburnians cringed at the unsolicited advice during our months-long lockdown. If there is one thing we should have learnt from COVID-19, it is that nobody should gloat or point fingers.
NSW residents don t need to be told how to deal with their latest COVID-19 outbreak. Victorians understand.
Credit:James Brickwood
Thatâs why I have no advice for Sydney as it faces its own concerning outbreak. You donât need it.
But as a Melbourne-based
science reporter, I do have a little list of things I wish I had known, or focused more on, during the cityâs outbreak.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg were publicly campaigning for one. Restaurant and cafe owners were desperate, as were people who’d been cut off from friends and family for two months.
Thompson was a member of a Melbourne University research team, led by epidemiologist Tony Blakely, asked to provide scientific modelling to help inform the government’s exit strategy. The modelling didn’t tell the government what it should do but provided a series of projections about the risk of a further epidemic before Christmas.
The most important variable in the modelling – essentially a political one – was how far the government was willing to push case numbers down before it allowed things to reopen. Although Andrews didn’t say it out loud at his press conference, it was clear to Thompson as he drove from his Castlemaine home to Bendigo that the government had decided to go all-in; it planned to eliminate the virus.
Coronavirus vaccine developer urges federal funding for promising candidate after UQ failure
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FriFriday 11
Professor Nikolai Petrovsky wants COVAX-19 to attract federal funding.
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The developer of a coronavirus vaccine candidate being trialled in Adelaide is urging the Federal Government to divert funding to the project, after another potential vaccine was abandoned.
Key points:
Flinders University s Nikolai Petrovsky has been working on a vaccine for months
He says the failure of the UQ candidate provides an opportunity to divert funding to his project
Phase 3 trials are expected to begin early next year
It was developed by Professor Petrovsky s company Vaxine, which has laboratories at Flinders, and is based on a protein produced in insect cells.