New South Wales reports nine deaths and 1542 new Covid-19 cases

Published

5 years ago

September 10, 2021

Apna News

New South Wales has announced 1542 new locally-acquired Covid-19 cases and 9 deaths in 24 hours.

A woman stands waiting to get vaccinated in Sydney. Photo: AFP

The number of new cases is a new record for any Australian jurisdiction.

State Premier Gladys Berejiklian said she and the Health Minister would address the public “intermittently” on a needs basis, instead of the usual daily media conferences.

“I will turn up when I need to but to expect the leader of the government indefinitely to do this every day means that I am not doing my job properly,” she said.

Earlier this week, Berejiklian released modelling which estimated Covid-19 cases would peak in NSW next week and that hospitalisations would surge next month.

She has previously said “September and October will be really difficult” for the state.

“What we need to do is all of us have to start accepting that we need to live with Covid because Covid would be around for three or four years,” she said today.

Despite the daily Covid-19 press conference being a fixture of the Delta outbreak the Premier rejected the suggestion she was trying to hide from the public.

“We have the most transparent information of any state,” she said.

“Apart from repeating the numbers that health repeats, we have to make sure we have something important to say and I think people understand the health messaging now.”

In 2020 the Premier only ceased daily press conferences when NSW was recording a very low number or zero Covid-19 infections per day.

Among the deaths in the latest reporting period was a man in his 30s who died at Nepean Hospital.

A woman in her 40s from south-west Sydney died at Liverpool Hospital and a woman in her 50s from the Central Coast died at Gosford Hospital.

The other people who died were aged in this 60s, 70s and 80s.

Berejiklian said although there had been a recent stabilisation of cases in the Canterbury-Bankstown area in Sydney’s west, infections were on the rise again.

Deputy Premier John Barilaro said cases were stabilising in regional areas of the state, although they were still high in the Illawarra region.

Restrictions for fully vaccinated people will ease in NSW next week, and the Premier announced a small but significant tweak to the new freedoms today.

From 12:01am Monday (local time), fully vaccinated people who live outside Sydney’s 12 local government areas (LGAs) of concern will be able to gather.

The five-person cap had been set to include children, however, the rules have been updated and now anyone aged under 12 will not count.

The tweak will make it easier for families with young children to meet.

Meanwhile, fully vaccinated people in Sydney’s 12 local government areas (LGAs) of concern will be able to enjoy two hours of outdoor recreation with members of their household

They must stay within 5km of their home, not mingle with people from other households and abide by the 9pm to 5am curfew.

There are currently 1,156 Covid-19 cases in NSW’s hospitals, with 207 people in intensive care, 89 of whom require ventilation.

-ABC

Covid-19 update: 8544 new cases, 39 further deaths linked to virus

Published

3 years ago

June 19, 2023

News Staff

There were 8544 new cases of Covid-19 reported in Aotearoa in the week to midnight on Sunday, and a further 39 deaths attributed to the virus.

The total number of deaths attributed to the virus in New Zealand is now 3077.

In addition, there were 246 cases in hospital at midnight on Sunday with six in intensive care.

The seven-day rolling average of cases was 1217.

Last week, 9883 new Covid-19 cases were reported and a further 37 deaths were attributed to the virus.

Source: RNZ

Dr Jonathan Howard: why US doctors spread Covid disinformation

Published

3 years ago

May 21, 2023

News Staff

An American doctor believes more than 800,000 Americans would be alive today, if the US had taken New Zealand’s Covid approach.

Jonathan Howard, who is the chief of neurology at Bellevue Hospital in New York, said he was angry that influential health professionals minimised the seriousness of the virus.

“We want them infected,” was the call of then presidential science adviser Paul Alexander.

It’s also the title of Howard’s new book, which tells the story of how some medical and public health professionals came to become anti-vaccine and pro herd immunity.

He told Kim Hill on Saturday Morning there was a deluge of mis-information from prominent US doctors, some of whom wanted to actually spread the virus.

“Famous doctors from our top universities went on television and told people that Covid was just going away, that it was just the flu, that young people under the age of 65 have essentially no risk,” he said.

“And not only were there not attempts to limit the virus, these were loud influential voices who wanted to spread it.

“You can read quotes from our former Covid advisor, Donald Trump’s former Covid advisor, celebrating rising cases, saying this is a good thing when cases rise, which is shocking and astonishing.”

While Howard said there were obvious differences between the two countries, many lives could have been saved if the US had taken a similar approach to New Zealand.

“If we had limited infections until we had vaccinated the vast majority of our population, we would have potentially had hundreds of thousands of people still alive today, there’s no question about that.”

However, our zero-Covid strategy wasn’t without its critics, with Stanford professor Jay Bhattacharya writing that it had “cost New Zealand dearly”.

“I think that the fact that most of your grandparents are still alive means that zero Covid did not cost you dearly,” Howard said in response.

“I don’t discount that, there were real costs of the lockdowns, I don’t know anyone who argues otherwise and I want to be very clear that I was protected from those costs, meaning I am very fortunate to be employed, I worked throughout the pandemic, I was never lonely, I don’t have my own business.”

But Howard said he didn’t think that the alternative – letting the virus spread freely – would have yielded a better outcome.

He said that when forklifts were needed to move bodies into giant refrigerated trucks in New York, it was fantasy to imagine the city could have operated as normal during the pandemic.

“You talk about deferred healthcare – every single healthcare worker was working with Covid patients, our hospitals were overflowing,” he said.

“So when I hear people lament they missed cancer screenings, who would have done those screenings? Would elderly patients have left their house to go to crowded waiting rooms to get a mammogram for example? I don’t think so.

“I think that the fantasy is that things could have just been normal if only if it hadn’t been for overly cautious politicians.”

By comparison, New Zealand did well, Howard said.

“I look at the numbers, I look at your death rate with great jealousy.” he said.

“And I think for long periods of time your economy was more open than ours was because we had to keep locking down, just because there were overwhelming outbreaks of the virus.”

Howard said the fact many older New Zealanders were still alive compared with the US statistics, showed the success of this country’s Covid strategy.

Source RNZ