Good morning, I’m Stephanie Convery with you on this, the final Saturday earlier than Christmas (DON’T PANIC).
It has been a helluva week, and yesterday we capped it off with an enormous rise in Covid-19 circumstances in New South Wales and Victoria, jumps in Queensland and South Australia too, plus a good bit of common anxiousness about what the surge may imply and the way a lot case numbers may develop.
The rises got here as Covid-19 testing sites came under strain forward of the busy Christmas interval.
Tennant Creek within the Northern Territory went into lockdown after 4 Covid circumstances had been discovered there.
Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk introduced yesterday that masks mandates could be returned to retail settings over Christmas and the New Yr whereas Western Australia introduced it could tighten journey guidelines for arrivals from Queensland and Tasmania arrivals.
NSW and Victoria scrapped their three-day isolation necessities for worldwide arrivals. (They may now have to get a PCR take a look at inside 24 hours of arrival and isolate till they get a unfavourable end result.) Australia additionally handed a vaccination milestone: 90% of over-16s at the moment are double-dosed.
Australia’s chief medical officer moved to reassure folks that the vaccine remains to be efficient in opposition to extreme illness, urging those that are eligible to get their booster shot.
Nonetheless, it stays to be seen how a lot havoc Omicron will wreak on our Christmas holidays. We’ll deliver you all of the Covid information of the day because it comes our method.
We additionally learnt the names of the 5 youngsters who died in the awful jumping castle incident in Tasmania.
The Tasmanian schooling division introduced a ban on the usage of leaping castles in any respect state colleges late on Friday. Faculties had been informed the ban on “all leaping castles and inflatable amusement gear” could be imposed indefinitely.
All proper, somebody deliver me a espresso, please! Let’s get caught in.
