What we learned: Tuesday 22 February
With that, I will leave you to enjoy your evenings as I go to inspect the water damage in my bathroom. Stay dry, Sydney-siders.
Here were today’s major developments:
- Australia has closed its embassy in Lviv and ordered all Australians to evacuate Ukraine after Putin ordered troops to descend in the east for ‘peacekeeping operations’. Australia’s foreign affairs minister Marise Payne has condemned Russia’s declaration that separatist regions in eastern Ukrainian are independent states as the crisis continues.
- Limited train services are back running in Sydney today and the state government has dropped its case against the rail workers’ union after the network was shut down amid an industrial dispute.
- The RTBU secretary has called on the PM to apologise for comments suggesting the suspension of the services was due to union-led strikes.
- China says an Australian plane dropped a sonar buoy in water near a Chinese ship following claims its warship pointed a laser at an Australian surveillance aircraft north of Australia.
- A defence spokesperson quickly responded, and said the Australian surveillance aircraft followed “a standard flight profile” and the plane dropped buoys only after the laser incident.
- Western Australia has released its Covid-19 modelling projecting 129 Covid deaths, peaking at 10,363 cases per day next month. WA recorded 258 new local cases.
- And in Victoria, the mask mandate will be lifted from Saturday, along with recommendations to work from home. Victoria recorded 14 Covid deaths and 6,786 new infections, while NSW recorded 14 Covid deaths and 8,752 new cases. Queensland will lift its indoor mask mandates on 4 March.
Here’s the latest from AAP on the possible easing of isolation requirements for household contacts in Australia.
Household contacts of positive cases are currently required to undergo seven days of quarantine, unless they are an essential worker without any symptoms.
However, the health minister, Greg Hunt, said there was capacity for exemptions from isolation to include everyone, following the success of the measures for essential employees.
It comes as officials from the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee in NSW and Victoria consider removing the household isolation rules in both states.
Hunt said today:
NSW and Victoria, with the commonwealth’s support, are leading that work, and I strongly support that direction. The next step is to consider expanding that definition (of household contacts) through the AHPPC … and it has worked well with our nurses.
The health minister said officials would follow the medical advice when considering changes to the rules:
It’s always a balance of ensuring that we have decreasing case numbers, and that’s a trend which I’m increasingly confident of. As a result of that, that actually allows us to have greater freedoms.
Meanwhile, the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, said despite falling case numbers, it was too soon to implement a UK-style scrapping of restrictions.
He said the workplace issues in cities, which had been exacerbated by the Omicron wave at the start of the year, were now beginning to ease:
People are getting back to work and some of those workforce shortages are starting to abate. This is the next step in the road, reducing restrictions even further, and we’ll continue to monitor the situation in Australia.
Updated
