Good afternoon. I'm here to bring you the Australian Government's
COVID-19 pandemic update and thank you to Suzanne for joining me today.
I can report that there are as of today
24,053 cases reported in Australia since the
commencement of the pandemic, that's an increase of
151. There are reported 148 reported in Victoria
and three in New South Wales all other states and territories have reported
zero cases for today. Sadly we've seen eight more deaths reported in Victoria
today. That brings the national total now to 525 and again I
I express my condolences to the family and friends of those that were lost
in the last 24 hours and during this pandemic.
We see today that there are 3,090 active cases.
644 people remain in hospital in our care. 42 of those are in
intensive care. We know that we've now conducted
more than 5.8 million tests, 56,000 of those in the
last 24 hours. Now we are aware that we are seeing some
decrease in the amount of testing. Perhaps some of this is as reported
particularly on the eastern seaboard the poor weather over the weekend that
we all saw, but it is important for me to
re-emphasise and remind everyone however mild those symptoms might be,
even if you've been tested before and certainly even if you've been positive
before, please if you have symptoms do go and get tested. There are ample
places across the country where testing is relatively
free, and enable and you again, a reminder that you do not require a medicare card.
Testing is free across Australia to everyone here
and we do encourage everyone to go about their testing.
So I'm happy to take questions if there are any questions.
I understand Dana, you have a question for me?
Reporter:Yes, thanks very much. I just wanted to ask with the
aged care response centres, some in the sector are arguing that they
should be set up immediately so that they can plan for outbreaks rather
than being activated after there is an outbreak. What is the
AHPPC's position on that one?
Thank you Donna. Yes the
the decision by National Cabinet to
establish Aged Care Response Centres in each of
the states and territories was agreed. These response centres Donna
are intended to have a strong preventative
approach as well as if a response outbreak. So for example as we saw over
the weekend in Queensland when there was some evidence of
community transmission very quickly the Chief Health Officer in Queensland made
a recommendation that all aged care facilities
should become closed to visitors for a period of time
and a Liaison Officer from the Commonwealth Department of Health is now
working directly with Queensland Health in their response. We will see further
work by the Safety and Quality Commission in
doing spot checks across the country, primarily obviously
firstly in Victoria but then elsewhere to further bolster
our preventative approaches in residential aged care and take
some of those lessons we've learned both from New March and
Victoria across the country. So we are done as seeing those responses
already up active but not necessarily established through a physical center at
this point in time. Claire?
Reporter: Yeah, thank you. My question is in regards to the University
of Hong Kong researchers confirming the first case of someone having
COVID back in March and then getting reinfected several months later.
I sort of have two questions on this. One, how do you think this will impact
our understanding of immunity, how long that might last among people
who have had COVID? And secondly, do you think it is a timely reminder
for the community not to become complacent given we don't know
a whole lot about this virus and that people could be reinfected
even if they have already had the disease?
Thank you Claire. That's correct, yes. So
we, this is the first documented case in the literature
of an individual who has been, has now substantiated evidence of re-infection.
We said all along that our understanding of this virus is
relatively new and we continue to learn new things all of the time. This
obviously is something that we are concerned about but
this is the first reported case. We will continue to monitor
the evidence as it grows and consider this in
in the relationship to our response.
Sorry Claire, what was your second question?
Reporter: just whether you think that this is a
reminder that people can't be complacent about you know social distancing and
all of the other measures in place designed to stop the spread even if
they have had COVID before.
Yes thank you Claire. Certainly
it is a salient reminder for us all that
this is a new virus that we need to
learn more about. So reinforcing again, thank you Claire, the
importance of not going out if you're sick. Those
things around hand hygiene and hand frequent hand hygiene the cough
etiquette and the 1.5 social distancing. All of
those things that we have to sustain over the long term
because we are still learning so much about this virus in our community.
Thanks Claire. Mark do you have a question for me?
Reporter: Hi, thank you so much. Just wanting to ask you about
some of the Victorian data that was released today. How concerned
are you that that shows that the vast majority of healthcare workers
being infected with COVID-19 were nurses but they were getting it at work,
and how safe can nurses feel about going to work when these sort
of statistics are being released?
Thank you Matt. Yes we have heard reported today from Victoria
they're reporting two waves of healthcare worker infection and the
second of those the majority of the healthcare workers
are getting that infection while at work and
obviously nurses are by far the largest
representative group in those infections. I am of course extremely concerned for
the infection in all healthcare workers and obviously
nurses are the the largest population of workforce, so
you would expect to see them well represented. As far as safe for
nurses to go to work it is important for me to remind them that
they all need to follow those important infection prevention and
control process processes that where we learn as
students and reinforce throughout our career.
The wearing of PPE and the processes and systems you put in place to protect you
and your patients are so important. When wearing PPE
it is very tiring and it is very difficult to do,
but we need as healthcare workers to look after each other and protect each
other and make sure that we're following to
the stringently the requirements to protect
ourselves as I say in patients from infection. So
Matt if the nurses as with all health care workers
follow those very clear instructions around how to protect them
that is how we can ensure the safety for healthcare workers and
patients in our hospitals and aged care facilities but that is a challenge that
we need to continue to reinforce and we will continue to learn about how
these outbreaks are happening in hospitals and how we
can prevent further outbreaks into the future.
Thanks Matt. Any further questions? okay thank you very much.