So it's 6,649 cases unfortunately
74 deaths in that group. So very few cases since three o'clock
yesterday afternoon. So far only four new case. There may be more later but we
certainly appear to be flattening that curve very successfully at the moment. Of
those three deaths that occurred yesterday, three extra deaths, there was a
75 year old, an 80 year old and a 92 year old. The last of those, well one of those
cases was from the Newmarch aged care facility in western Sydney. I'll say some
words about that facility shortly. So we're doing well in terms of flattening
the curve, that's the first of the precedents that the prime minister said
after National Cabinet last week that we need to absolutely be sure of before we
can start to release our social distancing measures.
So we're flattening the curve. The surveillance area looking at
ways we can find cases as quickly as possible, find their contacts as quickly
as possible. That talks to having more testing and testing in a wider range of
of places, a wider range of people. And so that's an important component. The other
one is the app that's been discussed a lot in this last week and that will
really assist us in terms of finding the contacts of people that have been
diagnosed with COVID-19 as quickly as possible so that that spread through the
community can really be controlled. So that's an important component of the
precedents for releasing social distancing. And the third one is our
response capability. Whenever there is an outbreak related to particularly
vulnerable settings and aged care facilities are one of those vulnerable
settings, we need to be able to show how quickly we can assist from the
Commonwealth and between states to deal with outbreaks such as that. So when we
think about those three precedents let's think about
the particular matter of the Newmarch aged care facility in Penrith and I
want to really stress that everyone that is involved with that outbreak are
working together for the same common aim that is to look after the well-being and
the safety of the residents of that facility and to support the the people
that usually run that facility, Anglicare, to do that in the best way possible. So
New South - excuse me - New South Wales Healt,h Anglicare the Aged Care Quality
and Safety Commission and the Department of Health are all involved in supporting
each other in different ways to achieve that aim. From the Commonwealth's point
of view we have offered unlimited workforce support, unlimited workforce
support that is dealing with the the difficult situation of having a large
number of patients of residents with COVID-19 but also a number of staff
that have had to absent themselves from work because they have been close
contacts with with someone with COVID-19. We have also offered and they have
received personal protective equipment. And Sonic who is a private provider of
laboratory services under contract with the Commonwealth has undertaken the
testing of the staff of that facility. So this is a complex situation, large number
of residents with COVID-19. Repeated testing, finding more cases which is what
we want to do to make sure we are finding cases even if they are
asymptomatic or mild so that they can be separated from people that are not
having the disease at present. But unfortunately already three deaths from
that outbreak. It really does demonstrate how if this virus does escape into those
vulnerable members of our society how quickly things can lead to these sort of
unfortunate events. There has been a press release just put out in the last
minute or two from Minister Colbeck the Minister for Aged Care outlining
these matters I've just spoken about and also to talk about a meeting that
will take place tomorrow with the Older Persons Advocacy Network where family
members can at that point also express any concerns they have and get
answers from from the right sources. So with that I'll open up it up for questioning.
JOURNALIST: Professor Kelly, can you provide a condition update on the residents there in terms of how
sick people are?
I don't have the details about the residents themselves, only to say that
there is a wide range, some people are quite sick and others either mildly
affected or indeed having no symptoms at all but positive for the for the
nasopharyngeal swab test. So there's there's a range of of those but
you'd expect in an elderly population like that that unfortunately the more
severe end of the spectrum of this disease tends to come through and as I
said already three deaths in that outbreak.
JOURNALIST: The Prime Minister yesterday spoke about older people and
the need for potentially people to visit in some cases, can I ask you in the
home setting how that operates? Is it okay for people to visit their
grandparents for example and what would you suggest would be the best way for
people to a social distance or to conduct that meeting outside, do you have
any advice? So I think the the Prime Minister has has acted on the advice of
the Australian Health Protection Committee and announcements that's been
made in the last few days reflect that. Firstly that important
component that we're not relaxing any of the measures at the national level that
were and have been announced up to now for a period of four weeks and so as a
colleague said to me today, just because you're slowing down you don't
take the parachute off when you're approaching the landing, you wait until
you've landed. And so we are really very clear and the Prime Minister is clear
about this, that we're waiting for that four weeks to happen before we change our
advice broadly about social distancing and the other measures that have been
put into place. So to answer your specific question, we have always been at
the national level from the Australian Health Protection Committee,
we have always had the opinion that whilst it's important to to protect our
vulnerable people in aged care facilities that that does not mean
completely locking down at this stage. It's certainly taking every possible way
that one can do this to decrease the the exposure to people
who may have the disease. And so there there are a range of things there. So the
statement from yesterday was really reinforcing that position to aged care
facilities to think about what what they have in place in terms of visits. To
relate that back to to a specific case of should grandchildren go to see their
grandparents, I think that is a different situation to an aged care facility.
People should make those decisions themselves but in general terms when
when we're still saying just hold off for a little bit longer to
take those vulnerable people in their own home and so think about the digital
digital connections, other connections that don't
entail very close contact for the time being. Let's see how we are in a couple
of weeks time or three weeks time and then there will be announcements
about relaxing some of these measures and our advice.
JOURNALIST: Professor, in terms of regional and rural Australia, could those areas be
be test cases for easing restrictions?
So the rural and regional areas is a complex one really. On the one side we know that so far
Australia has had a relatively small number of cases compared with many other
parts of the world and they mainly still being associated with
international travellers or people coming back from from overseas. So the
majority of those people up to now have been in our major cities. So rural and
regional areas and particularly remote Australia has been relatively protected.
So for them to take on this burden of social distancing measures and
the business restrictions that that has entailed
could be seen as being not proportionate to their risk. On the other hand, we do
know that remote areas, regional areas, and rural areas of Australia have less
capability to cope with a large outbreak in terms of health facilities for
example or even public health facilities to investigate such outbreaks. So I
think it's reasonable again for us to wait a bit longer to really protect
those healthcare assets in in those places and to protect the communities in
our rural, remote and regional areas.
JOURNALIST: Just looking at the issue of education, unions have been pushing for a four
square metre rule in classrooms but the AHPPC says that's not necessary, can you
expand on why the committee's taken that decision?
So the committee has not taken the position about
that four meter square rule, that's true and now that we're
looking to reopen schools and I must say had very good conversations with
independent schools yesterday and there a range of conversations happening
across Australia in relation to this, both with individual schools and
education departments and the like. So there's a great keenness to get the
kids back to school, we do recognise that the statements that have come out from
the Australian Health Protection Committee or from them and
through the National Cabinet there is there is some subtleties there which are
difficult to interpret and there'll be clarification made about that over
the coming days after the next National Cabinet meeting.
JOURNALIST: Can I just clarify, you said four cases but I believe the figures the ABC
is running are around seven, why is there a discrepancy there?
So this is since three o'clock yesterday it may well be a timing thing. We're
seeing more cases, more cases every day, I guess the the crucial point is not
many. So it may well be seven since yesterday morning.
JOURNALIST: Just switching from the health side of things, but from a public health perspective,
what kind of concerns does the committee have about the impacts of unemployment on public health and
what are the key emerging issues that your committee's seeing in terms of that public health impact?
I think it's very important that while
we're really concentrating on this pandemic and its response that we don't
get too narrow in our definition of what what are the health effects. So obviously
there are the direct health effects of the disease itself and we've talked
about those many times, for most people around 80%, it's of it's a relatively
minor illness. For around 20% of people they can get more severe illness, end up
in hospital, intensive care. And for a proportion, probably around 1% of those
diagnosed, there is a death rate and we need to consider that. Older people are
worse off than younger people in relation to those severe end of the
spectrum. But we we can't ignore other health effects and so quite
clearly there are health effects in relation to some of the social
distancing measures that have been put in place to protect the community
against a large outbreak, a large pandemic here in Australia of COVID-19.
And these are both mental, physical and physical health effects and so we
need to continue to look at that and to consider whether our response is
proportionate to the problem we're trying to deal with and so really
weighing up those risks and benefits from the health perspective but other
perspectives as well. Unemployment we know is can be a very long-term and
insidious or even acute health effect and certainly that's a component we need to consider.
JOURNALIST: And just in terms of the cruise ship industry, former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull
said today in hindsight he thought that the international cruise ship industry should have been shut down
a lot sooner. Do you share his opinion? What do you think about
the way the international community dealt with the cruise ship industry?
Well the cruise ship industries is quite an industry and there is a large
number of ships around the world and many thousands of people on each ship so
I don't know what the total figure is on any particular day but it's
a very popular and common pastime for a large proportion of the population.
Personally I've never been on a cruise ship but I understand from friends
and relatives that it's a very enjoyable time, mostly. So in terms of shutting
it down it's very easy for to use hindsight to make these decisions. We
made a decision very early in in the epidemic in Australia about limiting
cruise ship arrivals into Australia. We have allowed cruise ships to come for
two main reasons. One to to allow Australians to come home but also for
for ships that have demonstrated that they're in distress from COVID-19 or
other reasons have have docked and we've seen what that has led to. So in terms of
cruise ships we said very early on and there was very specific advice given to
Australians about cruise ships as early as mid-March that people should
reconsider whether they should go on cruise ships as part of the advice that
came from from the Prime Minister and the Minister for Foreign Affairs as I
recall. So we've been clear in our advice, most people have taken their advice
on board and I think there are now only two cruise ships still in Australian
waters and none of those have passengers on them.
JOURNALIST: I understand politicians are being briefed today about the contact tracing app you mentioned in
your preamble. What's your pitch to the Australian public at this point? Obviously there is
a great degree of scepticism about whether or not people are going to take up this technology.
So the app as I've spoken about before, is completely voluntary, it will be and it
could be as it comes on, a very useful tool to assist public health authorities
in state health departments or local Public Health Units to really much more
rapidly and more completely perform the contact tracing function which forms
part of our quarantine and isolation of cases and contacts so that that spread
of the virus will decrease in the community. Why is that important? It's
important because if we can really get on top of that it will allow us much
more leeway to change these social distancing measures which I'm sure we
all want to see happen. So my pitch if you like it to the Australian
people is please consider this. It's completely voluntary, I know that some
people won't won't take it up and that's their decision. Our research so far
appears that there is actually quite a lot of support for this app as it
is seen to be and it is only about collecting that information about
where you've been in contact with someone only is used when someone one
with the app has a diagnosis of COVID-19, it's only going to be used
by state or local public health officials, it will not be available to
anyone else and after 21 days it's gone.
JOURNALIST: And what research is that, sorry Professor? Are you able to to expand, is it focus
grouping, is it a, how have you gauged community interest?
So there's been a number of ways of doing that, both surveys and focus groups and so
yeah as I said, there's essentially three groups. I think there are people
quite reasonably concerned about privacy concerns and and other matters, for some for
some people that's a complete game breaker and they're not going to even
consider downloading it. Others when explained what the limitations
of the app are, and the privacy and data security and so forth, elements which are
absolutely crucial to it, are persuaded towards towards the other group who are
happy to do their part, they can see how it will help the effort more broadly but
also how it could protect themselves and their families by having that
information about having been a contact much more quickly so that that action can be taken.
JOURNALIST: And just to clarify that then, does that research indicate we are going to reach
the 40% threshold for it to be really useful?
Look, anything more than 0 is going to be useful, obviously the
higher the number the better. Whether we get to 40% or higher or lower that
that remains to be seen. I think this is completely voluntary, it will depend on
how many people take up the app and so I would certainly encourage all
Australians to consider it. To think through for themselves whether they
would like to download that. And then to really understand when that
information comes out later this week with more detail whether it's for the.
And if it's not for them that's fine, that's their decision. Okay, thank you very much.