21:45
Brett Holmes is the General Secretary at NSW Nurses and Midwives Association.
He is in The Sydney Morning Herald this morning talking about the situation in NSW hospitals.
Here are a few lines from it:
“Over the weekend, an ICU nurse at an outer-metropolitan hospital declared, “We are falling like flies.” In the state’s north, an ICU nurse said, “We’ve had two years to prepare for this and it’s still shit everywhere”; another reflected, “There’s nothing left in the tank.”
“Staffing has become so bad that many ICUs are working without team leaders or the nurses they need in addition to bedside nurses to keep the units working seamlessly.”
He says nurses have been told not to remove their masks or glasses when they’re together – even if socially distanced.
“If pulled from home isolation, they can only travel to and from work, with strictly no stops. They are not provided with rapid antigen kits for home use, having to do these tests at work under supervision.
“Some have been waiting three days or more for their PCR test results, even for testing that has been fast-tracked for health workers.”
21:33
Amy Remeikis is Guardian Australia’s political reporter.
She is on RN right now and this is what she had to say about the election:
“We look back at the election cycle at this point last time, and most people had made up their mind about Bill Shorten.
“Many had decided who he was and whether or not they liked him and he was an unpopular leader. This time around with Anthony Albanese, some people like him, some people don’t but there’s still a big chunk of voters who are undecided and Labor sees that as a lot easier to overcome.”
She was also asked which seats the election will be fought and won in:
“New South Wales and Western Sydney in particular. I think that’s going to be the most important jurisdiction of the election, and you can see that from how much time both leaders are already spending there.”
21:23
Twenty-eight Sydney testing clinics closed
Australian Clinical Labs has shut 28 PCR testing clinics around Sydney “until further notice” because of the backlog in tests.
The closures mean the company is now only operating its Bella Vista clinic for paid international travel tests, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.
The 28 sites include both drive-through and walk-in clinics.
The company said:
These closures have been necessary due to the significant increase in testing volumes across the State.
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21:11
Labor MP Linda Burney has been on the ABC this morning calling for the federal government to make RATs free:
If people need the test and they are required to have it, then they should be able to have it at an affordable price and they should be able to have access to it. I have never seen such a bungled policy stuff-up in my life.
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21:11
AMA says it raised questions about RATs in September
AMA vice-president Chris Moy was on RN Breakfast this morning. He said the AMA had told the federal government about the shortage months ago:
RN Breakfast
(@RNBreakfast)“I, the AMA and other groups asked the government about the testing strategy several months ago…it was put to us that the government would not intervene when the private market could take over” – Dr Chris Moy, @ama_vice
RN Breakfast
(@RNBreakfast)“The problem is relying on the private market during a health crisis and there is a market failure… we have…inability to supply [RATs] at a critical moment, lack of equity of access… and also there is poor communication about when people should be using them” – @ama_vice
RN Breakfast
(@RNBreakfast)“The problem at the moment is that the lack of [rapid antigen tests] is completely hampering personal responsibility and it is a frustration that is a glaring hole in the current management of COVID” – Dr Chris Moy, @ama_vice
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21:11
Good morning
Good morning. This is Cait Kelly and I will be taking you through today’s news.
Here are the big stories so far:
Millions more Aussies are now eligible for their booster shot with the time frame between second and third doses reducing to four months from today.
About 7.5 million Australians are now eligible, up from around 4.1 million at the end of 2021.
Boosters will be brought forward to four months after the second dose, down from five months. From 31 January, people can get boosters after three months.
NSW is likely soon to set a new record for Covid-19 hospitalisations as it nears the figure reached at the height of the Delta outbreak in September.
There were 1,204 people in the state’s hospitals with Covid on Monday, 62 shy of the record set on 21 September when NSW was in the grip of the Delta wave.
And Victorians are being warned to expect surging cases numbers and hospitalisations. Victoria’s Covid-19 response commander, Jeroen Weimar, has warned that the number of people hospitalised with the virus, now at 491, is expected to increase “quite rapidly” in coming days.
The fight about free rapid tests also continues, with the tests being difficult to buy despite forming the backbone of Australia’s new testing regime.
Scott Morrison has so far resisted calls to make the tests free, despite some states moving to do so.
“We’re now at a stage of the pandemic where you can’t just make everything free,” the prime minister said, while the AMA has revealed it warned the federal government about a shortage of RATs last September.
With that – let’s get into it.
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