- The Federal Treasurer said Victorians “deserve answers” about what went wrong in the hotel quarantine system to allow multiple breaches to occur
- A number of COVID-19 cases in the community have been linked back to security guards at designated quarantine hotels
- An inquiry has been launched into the issue, however, it has now been delayed due to the strict stage-four lockdown introduced
- Josh Frydenberg also called on Victorian officials to provide more support to its residents, who had lost work due to the lockdowns
- Meantime, another 19 people have died after contracting the coronavirus, while an additional 322 new cases were also recorded in Victoria
The Federal Treasurer said his home state of Victoria deserved answers about the state’s flawed hotel quarantine system after multiple breaches occurred with “deadly consequences.”
Security guards who allegedly contracted COVID-19 from quarantined guests and spread it in the community have been blamed for Victoria’s latest outbreak.
Melbourne is now dealing with hundreds of new cases of the coronavirus every day, with the city forced back into strict lockdowns.
Josh Frydenberg said he didn’t want to place the blame on Victorian Premier, Daniel Andrews, but residents in the state needed an explanation.
“Victorians know the ‘what’, but they don’t know the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ when it comes to the quarantine failures,” he said.
“And what we’re dealing with here is hundreds of new cases in Victoria every day, 97 to 98 per cent of new cases in Australia are coming from Victoria alone,” he added.
An inquiry into Victoria’s flawed hotel quarantine system has been delayed due to the stage-four lockdown restrictions introduced last week.
Help needed
Treasurer Frydenberg also called for more support to be given to the hundreds of thousand Victorians who’d lost work due to the new coronavirus restrictions.
The Federal Government announced last week it was going to overhaul the JobKeeper program, to make it easier for businesses and workers to receive support.
“We as a Federal Government will continue to provide the support that is necessary to Victorians and to all Australians,” he said.
“But this is a joint effort … and the states do need to do more, including here in Victoria,” he added.
Victorian officials have been offering $300 to $1500 hardship payments to workers who need to self-isolate and don’t have adequate sick leave.
The state’s Health Minister also announced changes to the COVID-19 testing system today, with residents now able to requests tests be delivered to their homes.
“We will go to people’s homes and we will ensure that they will be able to be tested within a 48-hour period,” Health Minister Jenny Mikakos said.
“This is designed to ensure that approximately 200 vulnerable Victorians every day will have access to this new testing capacity, making sure that people who might have limited mobility due to disability or might have other vulnerabilities due to chronic health conditions can get tested in their own home,” she added.
Deadliest day yet
Victorian officials also revealed they had recorded their biggest daily number of deaths since the pandemic began, with 19 more COVID-19 fatalities overnight.
14 of the 19 deaths were linked to aged-care homes in the state, while the youngest of the deceased was a man aged in his 50s.
Another 322 new cases of the virus were also recorded in the last 24 hours, slightly down on yesterday’s total of 394 new cases.
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said while he was pleased case numbers were down, there was still a lot of work to be done to eradicate the virus.
“I think we all got to be careful not to be getting ahead of ourselves. We have one day’s data,” he said.
“So it is still very early for us to be trying to measure the impacts of stage-four [lockdowns], but we’re certainly seeing perhaps some greater stability that is a result of the cumulative impact of stage-three [lockdowns],” he added.