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- Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has fronted a parliamentary inquiry on his Government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic
- The Premier and his State Government have been criticised for their failed hotel quarantine program, which contributed to a second wave of infections
- An independent inquiry examining the hotel quarantine breaches has been delayed amid stage-four restriction being introduced in Melbourne
- Victoria has also recorded an additional 331 new cases of COVID-19, showing case numbers are slowly beginning to trend downwards
- But, the number of deaths has again increased, with 19 more people dying from COVID-19 in the last 24 hours
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has been grilled by the opposition at a parliamentary inquiry into his Government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Questions and answers
In particular, Liberal MPs took aim at the State Government’s botched hotel quarantine program, which resulted in the virus being spread to the community.
The hotel breaches are also being blamed for contributing to the huge second wave of infections currently being experienced in Melbourne.
The Andrews Government has had to implement two back-to-back lockdowns to curb the rising infection rate, costing hundreds of thousands of people their jobs.
However, Premier Andrews said this morning in the parliamentary inquiry that without the lockdowns case numbers would’ve exploded.
“[Without the] work that we’ve done, [we] would have seen not hundreds of cases but, indeed, many thousands of cases, close to around 20,000 cases in just a few weeks’ time,” he said.
He also defended calls for his Jobs Minister to resign after the Herald Sun singled him out for blame in relation to the botched quarantine program.
The inner workings of Melbourne’s catastrophic hotel quarantine system have been revealed in a bizarre video showing the bureaucrats in charge of the botched scheme boasting they were treating it as a “massive inbound super trade mission”. https://t.co/9rH8vAED0Z
— Herald Sun (@theheraldsun) August 10, 2020
“I’m not interested in playing political games with this. I don’t think there’s any comparison between the events you’ve quoted,” Premier Andrews said.
“We are all working as hard as we can to fight a wicked enemy,” he added.
An independent inquiry into the quarantine program, overseen by Justice Jennifer Coate, is currently delayed due to stage-four lockdown restrictions in Melbourne.
Latest case update
Following his appearance at the parliamentary enquiry, the Victorian Premier hosted a press conference to confirm the state’s latest COVID-19 numbers.
There were 331 new cases of #coronavirus (#COVID19) detected in Victoria in the last 24 hours.
— VicGovDHHS (@VicGovDHHS) August 10, 2020
Sadly, 19 deaths were reported.#Covid19VicData pic.twitter.com/bajE79zjUy
An additional 331 new cases of the virus were recorded in Victoria in the last day, as well as an additional 19 deaths.
Of the deceased, the youngest was a woman aged in her 50s, while 14 of all of the 19 who died overnight were linked to aged-care centres in Victoria.
Premier Andrews also revealed the number of people in hospital with the coronavirus has risen, with 650 Victorians now seeking hospital care, with 47 people in intensive care.
