Australia news LIVE Victoria records 12 new local COVID-19 cases Sydney cases continue to grow amid lockdown

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Western Bulldogs midfielder Josh Dunkley will enter 14 days of isolation after discovering he was at a tier-1 exposure site.

He visited his local cafe on July 14 and that location has since been declared a high-risk exposure site. He will miss this weekend’s match â€" the Dogs are currently fixtured to play Adelaide, but that could change.

Josh Dunkley only recently returned from injury.Credit:Getty Images

Read the full story here.

Queensland will not make any changes to the NSW border at this stage, with authorities still satisfied cases are not spreading beyond greater Sydney.

Calls for a hard border with NSW to be reinstated are growing, due to the growing case numbers in greater Sydney, as well as new cases outside of that.

Queensland State Health Minister Yvette D’Ath.Credit:Matt Dennien

Most recently over the weekend it was revealed two people tested positive to COVID-19 after staying at a truck stop just over the border in the Tweed shire last week.

Queensland Health Minister Yvette D’Ath said they were not moving to change the restrictions currently in place, because there has not been any local transmission of the virus.

Ms D’Ath said there had also not been any positive sewerage tests, both of which meant that the virus seemed to be contained to the greater Sydney area.

“This is important because we know that putting in place a hard border on NSW is logistically difficult and has a significant impact on those border towns.,” she said.

“We will only do this if we absolutely have to.”

Queensland has moved to tighten restrictions on freight drivers into the state after it was found standards had slipped since the beginning of the pandemic.

Almost half of heavy vehicles stopped at border highway locations in Queensland were caught without a pass or documentation to enter the state.

As a result, Queensland Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young says police will be upping compliance checks to ensure all drivers have been tested every seven days at least, while drivers from confirmed hospital areas in Sydney and Melbourne are tested every three days.

“It’s vital that freight continues, they ensure we have access to all our precious goods, including vaccines,” she said.

“But we need it to happen safely.”

A leading Melbourne epidemiologist says Victoria is on a “positive trajectory” but the state’s lockdown may stretch to a total of seven to 10 days.

“I think it’s on a positive trajectory. It’s not exploded,” Burnet Institute epidemiologist Mike Toole told radio station 3AW earlier this morning.

“I would expect somewhere between seven and 10 days total of lockdown. That would be my estimate, but this virus can surprise you. I think what is most reassuring is we have not discovered a transmission chain that we didn’t know about before. All these cases are linked back to either that family in Hume, or the removalists.”

The view along a near-empty Bourke Street towards Spring Street in Melbourne’s CBD over the weekend. Credit:Justin McManus

Professor Toole says health authorities are currently focused on the possibility that infectious people went into poorly ventilated venues where there was a lot of shouting, such as the Euro 2021 viewing at The Crafty Squire pub on Monday morning.

“I would think the sports bar in the CBD would be one of those high risk places where it may have generated a lot of cases,” he said.

“This virus has an incubation period of five to seven days on average, and in some people it’s much less than that and for some people a little bit longer. So I would have expected that by today, we would have seen some cases from that exposure [at the Crafty Squire].”

Professor Toole said in his opinion the first thing that should open up after lockdowns should be schools, because young people are missing out on “important intellectual and social development”.

“But we haven’t given enough attention to ventilation in school, vaccinating teachers, and making sure high school kids wear masks,” he said.

“I think that should be a higher priority, when we’re looking at a whole cohort of young people who are missing out on face to face learning and socialisation.”

Queensland’s Acting Premier Steven Miles is due to provide an update on the coronavirus situation in his state from 10am AEST.

It comes after the Sunshine State recorded no new cases of COVID-19. However, all eyes will be on the Qld-NSW border.

Watch live below.

Two NSW Police employees have tested positive for COVID-19 and are currently isolating at home.

One of the employees is an officer within State Crime Command while the other is a civilian employee. All close and casual contacts have been notified.

NSW Police on patrol at Manly Beach earlier this morning. Credit:Renee Nowytarger

“All measures are being taken to ensure strict health and workplace guidelines are followed,” A NSW Police statement said.

End-of-life advocacy group Dying with Dignity has backed a draft voluntary assisted dying bill from Sydney independent MP Alex Greenwich.

As my colleague Alexandra Smith has reported, NSW state MPs from across the political divide â€" including the Nationals, Labor, Greens and Shooters, Fishers and Farmers â€" have confirmed they will support the bill when it is introduced into the parliament.

Independent state member for Sydney, Alex Greenwich, says the pandemic will not stall his voluntary assisted dying bill.Credit:James Brickwood

Dying with Dignity President Penny Hackett has welcomed the draft bill, saying it will give terminally-ill people in NSW the ability to avoid suffering.

“Voluntary assisted dying law reform is supported by an overwhelming majority of the NSW community â€" with around 80% in favour,” she said.

“There are terminally ill people dying every week in NSW with incredible suffering, which cannot be relieved, even with optimal palliative care. This Bill would give dying people a chance to die peacefully, at a time of their choosing surrounded by their loved ones, without prolonged and futile suffering.”

Read more about the draft bill here.

Queensland has recorded no new cases of community transmission on Monday, as all eyes are on whether the government will move to strengthen border measures against NSW.

Acting Premier Steven Miles is due to give a COVID-19 update at 10am AEST, but Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s Twitter account has already given out Monday’s figures.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has arrived in Tokyo ahead of the Olympic Games. Credit:Getty

Two cases were recorded in hotel quarantine, bringing the active cases in Queensland to 36, with 7393 tests conducted in the 24 hours to Monday morning.

That number is slightly lower than the daily totals from the last few weeks, which is credited to both the fact that it was a Sunday and that recent clusters in Queensland have been settling down following low numbers of community transmission.

It comes as Queensland maintains its open border with regional NSW, while greater Sydney is still classed as a hotspot due to the outbreak there.

That is despite the Tweed Shire just over the Queensland border being labelled “orange” due to at least one positive case visiting a Chinderah service station on Wednesday, July 14.

Professor Peter Collignon, an infectious diseases expert from the Australian National University’s Medical School, was on Seven’s breakfast show Sunrise earlier this morning.

He was commenting on the federal government’s plan to increase the supply of Pfizer jabs from 300,000 to 1 million doses a week starting today.

Professor Peter Collignon.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Here’s what he had to say:

“This [virus] can go anywhere in Australia. So we do need to make sure there is a reasonably even distribution around Australia. Sydney has a problem now but it could be Brisbane in a couple of weeks time, or Perth, or wherever.

“We do need to make sure there is a relatively even distribution because we have this problem for the next few months at least, because it is winter, and we need to get as many people vaccinated as we can throughout Australia.”

Queensland Nationals Senator Matt Canavan says the media is hyping up the COVID-19 pandemic and has voiced his opposition to NSW’s lockdown.

“I supposed the lockdowns last year we didn’t know about coronavirus and we had to protect the vulnerable,” he said on 2GB on Monday morning.

Queensland Senator Matt Canavan. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer

“But we have a situation now almost all residents of aged care are vaccinated. A large proportion of older Australians have one dose, we aren’t seeing the same fatality rates overseas with the Delta variants so why are we locking down there?

“So many in the media are hyping this up not having to bear the cost of the decisions they’re encouraging the government to make.”

Mr Canavan said Australia had to accept it would have to live with the virus in the long term.

“There are no decisions now which don’t impose massive costs and yes unfortunately deaths, whichever way we go,” he said.

NSW has recorded four deaths during its current outbreak which has resulted in 1242 cases so far.

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