A Guardian Australia analysis of Victorian coronavirus cases shows that infections have been increasing in areas outside the locked-down postcodes, and that all significant growth areas are now contained within the wider Melbourne lockdown.
Using data aggregated daily from the dashboard of the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) here, we calculated the number of new cases a day for every local government area in Victoria.
We then checked to see if cases had increased or decreased over the past fortnight for each area that reported more than five cases during that period.
At the time of writing, a map of the results shows there has been significant growth in regions adjacent to the previously locked-down postcodes, with the largest increase in the Wyndham council area. Wyndham is where the Al Taqwa college is located, the site of what is currently the second-largest cluster of cases in Victoria.
There has also been an increasing number of cases in the Melton and Darebin council areas.
Australian PM says Australia can’t be shut down to contain second Covid-19 wave
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison says the response to a second wave of Covid-19 infections cannot be shutting the country down to try to eliminate the virus, and he’s moved to reassure people his government will not be withdrawing income support “for those in need”.
Morrison said lockdowns were necessary in Victoria given the significant spike in infections in the state, but “your protection against the virus is not shutting things down all the time”.
“You have to do that sometimes, as is the case in Victoria,” he said. He said trying to eliminate the virus wasn’t the “right strategy” for Australia.
“You don’t just shut the whole country down because that is not sustainable. I’ve heard that argument. You’d be doubling unemployment potentially, and even worse.”
Morrison said it was impossible to achieve elimination “unless we are not going to allow any freight, or medical supplies into Australia, or any exports into Australia, or things like this – there is alway
In Australia, a cluster of coronavirus cases at a pub called the Crossroads Hotel, in the state of New South Wales has been linked back to a man in Melbourne, Victoria who attended a workplace party.
NSW Health contact tracer Jennie Musto has explained the genomic link between Victoria and the NSW outbreak, as a man travelling from Melbourne to Sydney at the end of June.
A man from Melbourne came into a workplace in Sydney, and then there’s some transmission within that workplace and then they all went to a party that night of the third of July, at the Crossroads hotel. So this is where it all began.
She said he travelled on the 30 June, and works in the freight industry.
Musto said this case was linked to six colleagues who have been diagnosed.
NSW health minister Dr Kerry Chant has added more about the potential spread of NSW’s current outbreaks:
Whilst we’ve had a very strong focus on the Crossroads, a hotel cluster, it is very important that we don’t lose sight of the fact that Covid could have been introduced in any other parts of Sydney, and we may well have had transmission of the virus just continuing.
Andrew Cotter, the sports commentator turned labrador commentator in lockdown, has a new dispatch from Olive and Mabel. A shocking crime has taken place:
Andrew Cotter
(@MrAndrewCotter)Just hoping she can mend her ways. pic.twitter.com/d2YCniSNux
Alabama, Florida and North Carolina reported record daily increases in deaths from Covid-19 on Tuesday, grim new milestones that mark a second wave of infections surging across much of the United States, Reuters reports.
Florida, which has become an epicenter of the new outbreak, reported 133 new Covid-19 fatalities on Tuesday, raising the state’s death toll to more than 4,500.
“We must all continue to do our part to protect Florida’s most vulnerable and avoid the 3 Cs: closed spaces, crowded places and close-contact settings,” Governor Ron DeSantis wrote on Twitter. “Safeguarding the elderly and those with underlying health conditions will continue to be our top priority.”
Alabama reported a record spike of 40 deaths on Tuesday and North Carolina an increase of 35, bringing each state’s total to over 1,100.
The number of new US cases reported daily began rising about six weeks ago, driven by increases in southern and western states. Texas saw a record 10,745 new cases on Tuesday.
Brazil recorded 41,857 new cases of the novel coronavirus in the past 24 hours and 1,300 additional deaths, the Health Ministry said on Tuesday.
The nation has now registered 1,926,824 total confirmed cases of the virus and 74,133 deaths.
Domestic abuse calls to the police surged by more than a tenth in London during lockdown, research reveals, driven by reports from neighbours and family members.
There were 45,000 calls to the Metropolitan police concerning domestic abuse in the 11 weeks from 23 March, up 11.4% on average compared with the same period in 2019.
The increase – which equated to about 380 more domestic abuse calls a week – was driven by third-party reports, such as neighbours, rather than the victims, researchers at the London School of Economics’ Centre for Economic Performance found.
Three people who fled quarantine at a Herefordshire farm at the centre of a Covid-19 outbreak have been found and are now self-isolating, health officials have said.
Police had been searching for the trio, one of whom had tested positive for coronavirus, since Monday. It had been announced the previous day that about 200 staff at the vegetable farm and packing business AS Green & Co had been ordered to isolate there.
On Tuesday evening, Public Health England said the three had been “reached through the agency who secured their employment and they have confirmed they are self-isolating”.
The workers were asked to remain at Rook Row Farm after more than 70 tested positive. There were complaints that dozens of staff had been asked to work through the pandemic without proper protective equipment and no social distancing.
133m re-enter lockdown in India as Covid-19 cases top 900,000
Late on Tuesday, India’s coronavirus cases, the third-highest in the world, passed 900,000, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker. The current total stands at 906,752, with 23,727 known deaths.
The northern Indian state of Bihar, which has a population of 125 million, has been ordered into a new 15-day lockdown to combat coronavirus, joining states and cities around the globe that have reintroduced restrictions in recent days to counter fresh resurgences of the disease.
As the World Health Organization warned there were “no shortcuts out of the pandemic”, Sushil Kumar Modi, Bihar’s deputy chief minister, said on Tuesday: “[The] Bihar government has decided on a 15-day lockdown from 16 July to 31 July.
“All city municipalities, district headquarters, block headquarters will stay under lockdown. The guidelines are being finalised.”
The announcement came a few hours before the southern city and IT hub Bangalore, with a population of 8 million, was due to go into a week-long lockdown.
After imposing one of the world’s strictest lockdowns in late March, India had been steadily easing rules to lessen the economic impact, particularly on hundreds of millions of poor Indians who lost their jobs, bringing in new measures to ward off or respond to resurgences of the coronavirus pandemic.
