COVID Latest: Melbourne Lockdown Residents Say They've Got No Food
Monday: QLD club investigated for dance floor video; USA 4th of July parties
Morning! It’s Monday, July 6. 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 Sunday, Australia has 8449 reported cases of COVID-19 (that’s +94 since the day before), with 7399 reported as ‘recovered’, and 104 deaths, according to the latest federal Department of Health stats. More stats below.
5 CORONAVIRUS THINGS
Melbourne public housing lockdown
Nine public housing estates in Melbourne remain totally locked down over coronavirus spread fears, after two dozen cases were diagnosed among residents and more were feared. The sudden, complete lockdown — with residents given no notice, and no time — has come under fire for being heavy-handed and leaving people under-prepared.
My colleague Samantha Dick and I spoke to people inside the building, as well as people on the outside trying to help (our story here). Residents have been holding ‘help’ signs up to windows, calling down for assistance, and some say they’ve gotten little or no help so far. On Sunday afternoon, Idris — a Somali-born man who works at Melbourne’s airport — said he had not received any food packages or even communication about his situation.
“Forget about food. We haven’t had any contact whatsoever,” he said (link).
Others had received only basic staple food packages from food bank organisations, but were worried because it only contained “mismatched” items — flour and cereal but no milk, jam but no bread.
Some residents have since been given frozen pre-cooked meals like soup, and a massive community effort is mobilising to provide people with more nutritious and culturally-appropriate food. The above box is thought to only be an emergency box of non-perishable staples, pre-packed and able to be distributed at short notice, with the state government promising more help is on the way — but even late last night, some residents told me they had received almost nothing or literally zero assistance, with baby formula and other essentials also running low in the locked-down apartments.
AMA calls for restrictions halt
President of the Australian Medical Association, Dr Tony Bartone, has said that governments should ease back on their timelines to lift distancing restrictions, flagging the Victorian outbreak as a cautionary tale (link).
Bartone said “there is almost this sort of competitive tension to be the first state to get back to full pre-COVID ways”, saying now was an “important juncture” in the response.
“If we forget [social distancing and hygiene] and become complacent we will see what happened in Victoria happen in other parts of the country,” he said.
QLD nightclub under investigation
Bartone specifically cited Queensland’s recent approvals for nightclubs to recommence with music, coming after footage emerged of people dancing at a club in Brisbane (link). Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said police would investigate, as dance floors are not allowed to operate right now.
America nearing 3 million cases as 4th of July parties rage
It’s to the point where I’m doing a daily update exclusively on the U.S. response to the virus. In Texas, city mayors have warned their hospital systems could be overwhelmed in as little as two weeks, as COVID cases keep spiking (link). Experts are warning of “exponential” increase in the state — as well as in Florida and Arizona — with daily new cases in Texas above 5000 for a week straight. One in four tests are coming back positive in Texas.
Donald Trump still says his response is “moving along well” (link). He also claimed the virus is “99 percent harmless” — which, even on the most basic stats available, is verifiably false. The latest stats show the USA has 2.874 million COVID cases confirmed, and a tick away from 130,000 deaths. That’s a death rate above 4.5 percent.
The U.S. is at nearly 2.9 million cases alone, almost one-third of the entire global total — but is that stopping Americans from going out to party this weekend, their Fourth of July Independence Day celebration? Nope.
This video, from a party on a lake in Michigan, is quite something to see for all of us who’ve been diligently social distancing since March. It’s quite incredible how much of America just collectively decided they don’t care about coronavirus anymore and whatever happens, happens
Today’s stats:
The latest stats from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering (as of 7.30am AEST Monday) report 11,366,145 confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide. There have been 532,649 deaths.
The United States has 2,874,396 confirmed cases; Brazil is next on 1,577,004, then Russia (680,283). The U.S. has the most deaths (129,870), then Brazil (64,265) and the United Kingdom third on 44,305.
In Australia, the latest federal stats (as of 9pm Sunday) show 8449 cases, 7399 people recovered, and 104 deaths.
The latest Australian graph:
5 NON-CORONAVIRUS THINGS
The Herald Sun reports Australian federal MPs want the popular video app Tik Tok banned, and plan to examine the social media service in a Senate committee on foreign interference (link). It’s linked to the app’s usage and treatment of data collected from users, which is stored in servers in China.
Victory in the Eden-Monaro by-election has been claimed by Labor, with Kristy McBain currently ahead on a razor-thin margin that is unlikely to be overturned by the amount of votes left to count (link). It was the expected result, but as I’ve written in an analysis piece here, the outcome is likely to lead to a bit of soul-searching from both Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese.
Kanye West has (again) said he’s running for President of the United States in this year’s election — but it’s unclear if he’s filed any paperwork to do so, and if he hasn’t then, then time is running out for him to get his name on the ballot paper, due to a complicated series of application dates and processes (link).
JK Rowling is still going with her tweets against transgender people (link).
And if you haven’t been keeping up with the Ghislaine Maxwell latest, here’s a good summary/explainer of what’s going on (link).
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