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Australian state of NSW records six new cases
In Australia, New South Wales has recorded six new cases of community transmission in the 24 hours until 8pm on Saturday.
All six are close contacts of a person from western Sydney who tested positive yesterday.
A staff member who worked at Concord Repatriation General hospital is one of today’s new cases. They are now in isolation. They worked three shifts in the cardiology and radiology wards while potentially infectious on 12, 13 and 14 January. The person’s role involves minimal contact with patients, and they wore a face mask during each shift.
There were also three cases of Covid-19 recorded in returned travellers in hotel quarantine.
NSW’s chief health officer, Dr Kerry Chant, wants more residents to be tested after six new cases of community transmission were recorded in the state. The state conducted 12,700 tests over the past 24 hours.
“That is a decline among testing levels,” Chant said. “It is critical that we get those testing rates up very high.”
She especially called on more testing in Bankstown, Lidcombe, Auburn, Berala and Wentworthville.
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In the United States Joe Biden’s team has flagged a raft of executive orders to be issued by the new president immediately he’s in office, including several relating to the US Covid-19 epidemic.
Ron Klain, Joe Biden’s incoming chief of staff. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images
In a memo to senior staff, incoming chief of staff Ron Klain said Biden would sign orders related to the outbreak aimed at reopening schools and businesses and expanding virus testing. He would mandate mask-wearing on federal property and during interstate travel, and the following day, Friday, will act to provide economic relief to those suffering the economic costs of the pandemic.
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Australia’s health minister defends Australian Open proceeding
Daniel Hurst
The Australian health minister, Greg Hunt, has backed the decision to proceed with the Australian Open in Melbourne, saying the Victorian state government has “taken appropriate steps” to ensure the safety of tennis tournament.
His comments follow the news that 47 players and 143 travellers have been confined to their rooms after a coach and a flight attendant on the charter flight from Los Angeles and one person on a flight from Abu Dhabi tested positive for Covid-19.
Speaking in Melbourne on Sunday Hunt said the Victorian government was “monitoring and setting the terms and conditions for those that are arriving”.
Rafael Nadal arrives at Adelaide airport on Saturday. Photograph: Reuters
“They have a pre-screening process. They have a subsequent quarantine process. And this is what we’re doing as a country with all of our international arrivals – so we respect that process. We respect the steps they’re taking and also the way that they’ve responded. We think that that’s appropriate.”
When pressed on whether it was the right thing to host the Australian Open at the current time, Hunt said:
“With regards to the Australian Open, we respect not only the right, but also the processes of particular states to screen, to monitor and to conduct events – whether it’s the Melbourne Test, the Sydney Test, the Brisbane Test and the Adelaide Test, whether it is the current event, which the Victorian government has been planning. And we think that they have taken appropriate steps.”
But Hunt argued the federal government’s priority had been to bring stranded Australians home. Despite the recent reduction in flight arrival caps, and the decision by Emirates to suspend flights to Australia, he pointed to the government’s announcement on Saturday of 20 additional facilitated flights for returning Australians.
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Hello, this is our continuing coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. You can catch up on the previous blog here.
I’m over in Twitter @heldavidson, please feel free to send me thoughts and news tips.
Top story: Brazil recorded 61,567 new coronavirus cases on Saturday and 1,050 further deaths, marking the fifth consecutive day with more than 1,000 fatalities, the health ministry said on Saturday.
The South American country has now registered 8,455,059 cases since the pandemic began, and the official death toll has risen to 209,296, according to ministry data. It is the world’s third worst outbreak outside the US and India.
Other key developments at a glance:
It took just six weeks for the world to report the most recent 500,000 deaths from Covid-19, after death rates began to rise sharply in November 2020 in both Europe and North America, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Brazil marked the fifth consecutive day with more than 1,000 fatalities, as it recorded 61,567 new coronavirus cases on Saturday and 1,050 further deaths.
The Australian state of Victoria recorded another day of zero cases on Saturday. Victoria has recorded its 11th consecutive day of zero locally acquired cases of Covid-19, out of just over 11,000 tests.
New South Wales recorded six new cases of community transmission in the 24 hours until 8pm on Saturday.
The UK government posted the third-highest daily death toll from coronavirus on Saturday, but the number of new infections dropped to its lowest level this year.
Denmarkhas registered its first case of infection with a more transmissible coronavirus variant, first found in South Africa, known as B.1.351/501Y.
Franceon Saturday implemented a 6pm curfew intended to help stem the spread of infections, after the country’s death toll rose to over 70,000, the seventh highest death toll in the world.
Slovakiais planning another large-scale testing and quarantine push to combat a serious rise in coronavirus infections, health minister Marek Krajcisaid on Saturday.
Italy forecasts its debt to soar to a new post-war record level of 158.5% of gross domestic output (GDP) this year, surpassing the 155.6% goal it set in September.
Another coronavirus variant is likely to be in the UK already despite the imposition of a travel ban from affected countries. Prof John Edmunds, a member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), said he would find it unusual if the second of two new variants from Brazil was not already present, although it has not yet been detected.
India has begun one of the world’s biggest Covid-19 vaccination programmes, the first major developing country to roll out the vaccine and marking the beginning of an effort to immunise more than 1.3 billion people. The first dose was administered to a health worker at All India Institute of Medical Sciences in the capital, New Delhi.
Suicides rose in Japan in the second wave of the country’s Covid pandemic, particularly among women and children, despite having fallen in the first wave, a survey has found. The July to October suicide rate was up 16% on the same period a year earlier, according to a study by researchers at Hong Kong University and Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology.
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Hafta Ichi
Source: The Guardian
Keyword: Coronavirus live: struggle to quash Sydney cluster with six new cases; Brazil’s fifth day of more than 1,000 deaths | World news