COVID Latest: Community Sport Allowed To Restart In Weeks
Wednesday: Music industry 'SOS' call; gin recall after hand sanitiser mixup
Morning! It’s Wednesday, June 10. Here is today’s ‘5+5: coronavirus edition’ — 5 things to know about COVID-19 today, + 5 non-corona things as well.
Latest AU stats: as of 9pm Tuesday, Australia has 7267 reported cases of COVID-19 (that’s +2 since the day before), with 6720 reported as ‘recovered’, and 102 deaths, according to the latest federal Department of Health stats. More stats below.
5 CORONAVIRUS THINGS
Community sport back on in weeks
The NSW state government recently announced junior community sport could return in July, and as we’ve seen with the NRL’s resumption (soon to be followed by the AFL), senior professional sport is already back… but what of those aged 18+ who like to have a kick around after work or on the weekends? Senior community sport was conspicuously, and specifically, left out of the framework — but no longer. This morning, the state government suddenly announced that all community sport would be allowed to resume on July 1 (link), which is great news for yours truly and his Thursday night 5-a-side soccer team.
NSW’s acting sports minister Geoff Lee told 2GB radio that sport will resume, but spectators won’t be allowed to gather in the stands, people will have to record their contact details when entering the grounds, and canteens will be allowed to open up for 50 people. Players will be discouraged from handshakes and high fives, and asked to change or shower at home instead of at the ground. More details are to be decided and announced today. It comes as deputy premier John Barilaro outlined an ambitious call for restrictions to be eased enough to let the NRL host 40,000 people in stadiums within a fortnight (link).
Music industry pleads for corona support
More than 1000 artists, venues and festivals have joined a call for the music industry to get an urgent assistance package, as concerts and events face an indefinite shutdown due to restrictions on groups gathering (link). With many in the industry employed on casual, contract or short-term basis, lots of essential workers in music — like roadies, lighting and tech crew — did not qualify for the JobKeeper program. Bars and pubs are slowly being allowed to reopen, but to very small numbers that will not be viable for most concerts.
“While much of the economy starts to reopen, the ongoing restrictions on large gatherings means our industry will continue to be held back from returning to work. Without immediate government intervention, the Australian music sector will be hit twice as hard as the rest of the economy and thousands of jobs will be lost within months,” an open letter to the government reads, signed by the likes of Jimmy Barnes, Peter Garrett, Savage Garden, John Farnham, and Scott Morrison’s favourite artist, Tina Arena.
Some in the industry are looking for ways to skirt the restrictions — like hosting small-scale sit-down gigs, or drive-in concerts — but there are fears many venues and festivals may simply have to fold unless there is an urgent assistance package.
Gin bottle mixup leads to sickness, urgent recall
A South Australian brewery has issued an urgent recall of bottles of gin, after some were mistakenly filled with hand sanitiser instead of delicious alcohol (link). Nine bottles of hand sanitiser from the Apollo Bay Distillery were incorrectly labelled as gin, and reportedly sold at the Great Ocean Road Brewhouse in Victoria. At least one person claimed they were left sick after drinking the sanitiser. Many breweries and distilleries around the world quickly pivoted to producing hand sanitiser instead of booze during the pandemic’s early stages, as demand for the product soared and supermarket shelves were left bare.
WHO backtracks on ‘very rare’ asymptomatic claims
The World Health Organisation’s technical lead on COVID has been forced to walk back an earlier statement that it was “very rare” for asymptomatic coronavirus cases to pass on the disease, saying it was a mistake, and that it can definitely happen (link). Some studies say up to 40 percent of infections could come from asymptomatic virus carriers — which is why governments and health authorities are urging anyone with even mild symptoms to get tested ASAP, in case they might have a very mild or asymptomatic case of the virus, and be walking around spreading it to more people.
Today’s stats:
The latest stats from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering (as of 6.30am AEST Wednesday) report 7,185,573 confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide. There have been 408,954 deaths.
The United States has 1,973,803 confirmed cases; Brazil is next on 707,412, then Russia (484,630). The U.S. has the most deaths (111,751), then the United Kingdom (40,968) and Brazil third on 37,134.
In Australia, the latest federal stats (as of 9pm Tuesday) show 7267 cases, 6720 people recovered, and 102 deaths.
The latest Australian graph:
5 NON-CORONAVIRUS THINGS
Some 250 jobs will be cut at the ABC, in the areas of news and entertainment, thanks to budget cuts from the federal government (link). Nearly $800 million in funding has been slashed from the ABC since the current Coalition government came to power in 2014, The Guardian reported. The announcement came the same day as News Corp confirming hundreds more job cuts at its metropolitan mastheads, in addition to the 500 announced in recent weeks at their regional and rural papers (link).
Donald Trump has made an outrageous and baseless claim that a 75-year-old retiree — who cracked his head and bled out of his ears after being savagely pushed by police at a protest in Buffalo, New York last week — was an “Antifa provocateur” who was trying to “scan” police equipment to disable it (link). Here’s video of that incident, if you have’t seen it before:
George Floyd — whose death at the hands of police, now charged with his murder, was the flashpoint for protests and rallies worldwide — has been farewelled at a “homegoing” funeral ceremony in his hometown of Houston, Texas (link).
Popular American TV show ‘Cops’ has been cancelled for good by Paramount, in the wake of police protests (link). Speaking of cancelled, the founder of CrossFit gyms is under fire again for saying he wasn’t mourning George Floyd, and sharing unfounded conspiracy theories and wild claims about his death, the protests and coronavirus (link).
The Guardian has a wild story about a racist AI program which aggregates and publishes news stories on its own for the website MSN (link). The story began with the program mixing up the faces of singers from the group Little Mix — and then continued to outline how the staff at MSN had been told that the AI program would probably try to automatically make its own version of the Guardian article which was critical of that very AI program, and that staff had been told to delete it if that happened.
IMPORTANT EVERY DAY
Be hygienic; wash your hands properly, at least 30 seconds with soap and water, multiple times a day (here’s how you need to do it, plus a handy Dr Karl video tutorial); sneeze and cough into your elbows.
Listen to only official information from the World Health Organisation and legitimate health bodies — Don’t share dodgy stuff on Facebook. If it looks too good (or bad) to be true, it often is.
World Health Organisation latest statistics here; Australian government latest statistics here.
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Signing off — stay safe, be healthy, look after yourself and others.
Josh