Australia records highest daily one-day total of cases since start of pandemic, as Andrews announces 683 active cases linked to aged care in Victoria, and in Sydney the Thai Rock Wetherill Park cluster rises to 70. Follow latest updates• How Australia’s health workers are getting Covid-19• Victoria records 459 new coronavirus cases and 10 deaths • Covid-19 to compound GFC’s lasting impact on young Australians’ pay• Follow the global live blog• Sign up for Guardian Australia’s coronavirus email 2.45am BST Andrews said he will look at closing certain industries if the workplace transmission of coronavirus is not slowed.But he said his health advisors have not recommend taking that step at this stage.If we were to continue to see outbreaks, if we were to continue to see people quite obviously attending work when they shouldn’t be, then every option becomes on the table. And that’s not the position at the moment and I’m very grateful to those employers and they’re not the only high-risk sites. We shouldn’t single them out to the exclusion of others. It’s not just cool stores, meat works, abattoirs, whatever you want to term them, it’s not just big warehouses, distribution, freight, logistic centres, there’s lot of different sites, aged care, healthcare, the list goes on. But … You know, next steps may well have to include closing a number of these industries if we continue to see people attending work. So employers have got, business owners have got, a really big stake in this also. We have to work together to keep anyone who’s got symptoms away from work. Otherwise businesses will have to close and the thing is this: when you have an outbreak, that business will shut, they’ll be the subject of deep-cleaning, they’ll be the subject of literally of hundreds of thousands of hours of public health team work, contact-tracing, testing, all of that. There’s an economic cost to that, there’s a very significant public health cost also. So that work is not just me standing here asking people to do it. It’s got to be enterprise by enterprise workplace by workplace and I’m really confident that they are stepping up to do that work with us because they need to. 2.40am BST As of last week 1,200 people in Victoria have applied for the $1,500 hardship payment available to people who test positive to Covid-19 and don’t have access to sick leave, but only 192 people had actually received that money.Andrews agreed that was not acceptable, and said he had “asked for any and all resources that need to be deployed to get those payments made as quickly as possible”.I think that we can’t let perfect be the enemy of the good. We can’t let that be the enemy of getting those payments made quickly and I think that – you know, whilst we never encourage people to be claiming things they’re not entitled to, I’m very keen to get that money out as fast as we possibly can because the benefits will far outweigh any minor issues that we might have. Continue reading…
Via: Coronavirus Australia live update: Victoria reports six deaths and 532 Covid-19 cases and NSW 17 new cases
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