Australia's coronavirus death toll passes 500 as Victoria reports 17 more fatalities and 208 new cases
More than 500 Australians have died from Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic, with Victoria announcing 17 more people with coronavirus had died on Sunday morning.
The state also recorded 208 new cases of coronavirus, while New South Wales recorded four new cases and Queensland announced two new cases on Sunday.
Victoria’s death toll from coronavirus is now 415, bringing the national count to 502.
The state’s chief health officer Dr Brett Sutton said the trajectory of the outbreak was decreasing.
“We are not going to see three-hundreds or four-hundreds again – not under my watch. ”The latest deaths were one man and one woman in their 60s, three men in their 70s, four women and six men in their 80s and two men in their 90s.
Some 585 Victorians were in hospital with 32 in intensive care, including 21 on ventilators.
The Victorian figures were released on Sunday after the Melbourne set of The Masked Singer reality TV show was shut down because several crew members tested positive for the coronavirus.
“The entire production team, including the masked singers, the host and panellists are now in self-isolation,” the Network Ten program posted on Twitter late on Saturday night.
“They are all being monitored closely and are in constant contact with medical authorities.”
The Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, warned on Sunday morning the state was “not out of the woods yet” after it reported two new cases of Covid-19 linked to an outbreak at the Brisbane Youth Detention Centre at Wacol.
Both cases – a woman in her 30s and an infant boy – were from the same family as a known case and had been already quarantining at their home west of Brisbane.
On Saturday morning, the state introduced new rules restricting the number of people who could gather in homes and outside to 10 people, but businesses and organisations with Covid plans in place can continue to operate as they have been.
Palaszczuk said there were now nine cases in the cluster linked to the detention centre outbreak. The state has 16 active cases.
Among 6,875 tests carried out in the previous 24 hours, 202 detention centre staff and 11 inmates had returned negative tests, with a further 20 results from inmates still to be returned.
Queensland’s chief health officer, Jeanette Young, said the results of testing so far were good, because they showed the current cluster had not expanded. “But it’s too early for us to relax,” she said.
She said police had been out across the state tracking young people who had been discharged from the detention centre since 22 July.
Because staff and inmates had been previously unaware they were at risk of carrying the disease, people had been moving around different suburbs and locations.
She added: “This is why this cluster is a risk to us. We need to do a lot more testing.”
Queensland Health released a list of 43 locations with timeframes and asked anyone who visited those places at those times to get tested “if they develop even the mildest of Covid-19 symptoms.”
Palaszczuk on Sunday ruled out imposing further virus restrictions on businesses.
“We have no concern about that at the moment at all,” she told reporters.
“So please do not be alarmist about that because the businesses have COVID-safe plans in place.”
Meanwhile, four new cases were announced in NSW overnight, with two acquired overseas in hotel quarantine, one a household contact of a case linked to the Apollo Restaurant cluster in Potts Point in Sydney, and the fourth the hotel security guard reported on Saturday.
The security guard worked at the Sydney Harbour Marriott Hotel while it was operating for people in quarantine from overseas.
He is the second Sydney quarantine security guard confirmed to have Covid-19 after a week-long testing blitz on contacts of a guard who tested posi
tive on 14 August.
The NSW opposition wants the state government to give hotel quarantine security staff full-time jobs to avoid a Victorian-style outbreak.
The second guard was the sole person among the first ill guard’s 700 contacts to return a positive test.
The NSW chief health officer, Dr Kerry Chant, said the two guards worked the same shift on 3 August, while the newly diagnosed guard also worked at Sheraton Grand Hyatt Park hotel on the night of 16 August. He was asymptomatic at the time of his shifts.
The guard who originally tested positive also worked across a number of venues after he was exposed.
The NSW Labor health spokesman, Ryan Park, said the government needed to learn from Victoria’s mistakes.
“Securing our quarantine hotels shouldn’t be a part-time job,” he said in a statement on Saturday. “The role security guards play in hotel quarantine is too important.”
Labor wants hotel guards to be given full-time positions within the quarantine system, to help contain the virus should more guards be exposed.
Labor is also pushing for guards to be subject to testing, like the police.
On Sunday NSW deputy chief health officer, Dr Jeremy McAnulty, said there was no indication of any additional risk to the community from the Sydney Harbour Marriott Hotel.
He said NSW was currently treating 90 people in hospital, including seven in intensive care, where five people are on a ventilator.
In South Australia, a senior nurse returning from coronavirus-hit Victoria was diagnosed with the virus.
The woman flew into Adelaide on Friday and remains in hotel quarantine. She hasn’t shown any symptoms and is well.