Coronavirus Australia news: Singapore becomes first Asian nation to approve Moderna's COVID vaccine

We have been given our cue to close the blog for the day.

It has been another busy day on the blog. 

Thank-you very much to everyone who has been with us throughout the day.

We will be back again tomorrow to do it all again. 

Until next time friends, stay safe and be well.

Malawi faces a resurgence of COVID-19 that is overwhelming the southern African country where a presidential residence and a national stadium have been turned into field hospitals in efforts to save lives.

President Lazarus Chakwera, just six months in office, lost two Cabinet ministers to COVID-19 in January amid a surge that led him to declare a state of national disaster in all of Malawi's 28 districts.

Chakwera declared three days of national mourning over the deaths of the ministers of transport and local government, which shocked the nation and inspired a raft of new measures aimed at stemming the spread of the virus in a country with a poor health system. A more contagious strain of the coronavirus first reported in South Africa has since been confirmed in Malawi.

"Our medical facilities are terribly understaffed, and our medical personnel are outnumbered," Chakwera said in a recent address.

Malawi has seen its number of confirmed cases of the disease go above 23,000, including a total of 702 deaths as of Monday, according to Dr. John Phuka, co-chair of the presidential task force on COVID-19.

The numbers appear relatively small in a country of 18 million, but the 14,000 active cases are many times more than the number of established hospital beds.

AP

Police in Western Australia have charged two men who have refused to wear a face mask.

The first, a 51-year-old Beaconsfield man, allegedly was caught by police three times not wearing a mask. 

This happened between Saturday and Tuesday. 

He appeared in court today.

A 46-year-old Bunbury man was the second charged by police.

He allegedly was cycling when police say he was not wearing a mask.

Police say he was offered several times to wear a mask provided by police but refused. 

He will face court on Monday.

The COVID-19 vaccine developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca gives good immune responses in older people, even if there is a lack of data about its exact efficacy, Oxford's vaccine trial chief Andrew Pollard said on Wednesday.

Asked about a reported comment from French President Emmanuel Macron that the vaccine is "quasi-ineffective" among people over 65, Pollard said, "I don't understand what that statement means."

"The point is that we have rather less data in older adults, which is why people have less certainty about the level of protection," Pollard told BBC radio.

"But we have good immune responses in older adults very similar to younger adults, the protection that we do see is in exactly the same direction, and of a similar magnitude."

Pollard said different countries would recommend that the shot is used in different contexts after France's top health body recommended it only given to people under 65, but he pointed out the EU regulator had approved it for all ages.

Reuters

China plans to provide 10 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to global vaccine sharing scheme COVAX, as three Chinese companies have applied to join the initiative for approval, the foreign ministry said on Wednesday.

The COVAX scheme, backed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and GAVI vaccine alliance, is due to start rolling out vaccines to low- and middle-income nations this month, with 2 billion of 3 billion doses expected to be delivered this year.

China's foreign ministry said in January that Sinovac Biotech, China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm) and CanSino Biologics have applied to join the scheme.

Wang Wenbin, a spokesman at the Chinese foreign ministry, announced the supply plan at a regular media briefing on Wednesday, without going into details.

Reuters

Singapore has become the first country in Asia to grant approval for Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine, with officials saying it expects the first shipment to arrive around March.

The Moderna COVID-19 vaccine is the second to be authorised for pandemic use in Singapore, after the Pfizer vaccine, which is already being rolled out in the city-state.

As of February 2, more than 175,000 individuals have received their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, Singapore's health ministry said on Wednesday.

Reuters

Didn't expect to see me did you?

I have jumped on the blog to allow Sophie to continue some of the fantastic work she has been doing in recently.

I will be guiding us through the next little while. 

Throw me your questions and let me know some of your thoughts in the comment section.

Instead of a GIF, I will link out to a couple of the great stories Sophie has recently produced.

• Refugees like Sadaf have escaped violence but are more likely to be victims of bullying in Australia
• Two students with Tourette syndrome on how they experienced the Melbourne coronavirus lockdown

A new study from the UK has found the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine can substantially limit the spread of the disease, providing new hope for those countries hardest hit by the pandemic. 

Oxford University says the jab they developed with AstraZeneca can curb transmission rates by reducing the number of infected individuals within a population.

The president of the WA branch of the Australian Medical Association Andrew Miller is urging the state's health authorities to put measures in place airborne spread of the virus. 

"If we don't adopt an approach that mitigates against, that protects us against airborne spread in stuffy indoor situations then we will fail again and again and again," he said.

Well, first of all, from my understanding, in Queensland, it probably was only was the English couple, the cleaner and the partner - very close transmission. How the cleaner got it, I don't know. Could it have been through the hands of a rare aerosol event?

[Aerosol transmission] undoubtedly does occur. And nobody said it doesn't. But in the proper perspective of the total spread of this, it seems to be mainly close proximity and droplets and being associated with people that have got symptoms.

People without symptoms can transmit it as well, but people who are coughing and sneezing and have symptoms are much more likely to transmit virus much further than somebody who is asymptomatic and maybe singing or shouting occasionally.

The continued refusal to seriously acknowledge the significance of airborne transmission of COVID-19 is increasingly catching up with us!

-airborne transmission ... sigh ... when will we learn?!

Dr Collingnon was actually just asked this.

Question: Do we need to acknowledge the science which shows that a lot of the transmission that's taking place of coronavirus now is aerosol and not what we first thought, that it was droplets on surfaces?

Well, I don't think the science does show that. If you look at all the major people around the world, aerosols can occur, which are very small particles that stay in the air for hours, and potentially go huge distances within buildings. But the available evidence is the vast majority of spread is in people in close proximity — in their homes, in their workplace — within a metre or two in crowded indoor situations, and so that is very important.

Because if it really is aerosols, we're all in deep trouble. Because it means even ordinary masks won't work - you need N95 masks and respirators. It means there'd be widespread transmission within planes. You couldn't actually go to bars or restaurants and take your mask off, because then you'd breathe it in and get it into your lungs. I think the available evidence is that, while aerosols can transmit it, and nobody said it can't, the vast majority of transmission is via droplets, which means the basics - keeping your distance, avoiding indoors crowded, washing your hands, staying away from others when you're sick.

All of that makes a huge amount of difference. It won't stop all transmission, but it definitely gets that effective R rate, well below 1, which means you stop epidemics and huge transmission between populations.

I think we do need to improve our quarantine hotels. Some of the photos I've seen, and sometimes we see people without masks but, more importantly, they're not always wearing eye protection. I mean, if you cough or sneeze and you've got COVID, they can go 1m, 2m or 3m and it can land in your eyes, and then that gets to the back of your nose and can cause infections.

I think whenever anybody's likely to be within 2m or 3m of anybody with a high probability of COVID - particularly returned travellers, 1% or 2% of them have it — we need to make sure we've got full protection onboard. Not only a mask, but eye appreciation in the form of a face shield as well. I think, frequently, that's not been the case.

Dr Peter Collignon, infectious diseases physician and microbiologist at the Canberra Hospital and professor at the Australian National University Medical School, is speaking on ABC News Channel now.

The recent short lockdowns - Brisbane, Adelaide, and now Perth - so far there's no evidence that it gives you additional benefits to having good testing and good case finding, which Western Australia has.

The advantage of a lockdown is, if you have a lot of community cases, and particularly mystery cases - because it means you haven't been able to identify it - but in these small clusters where you know the source and you've got good contact tracers, you should have everybody that's getting infected in isolation or quarantine.

And so there shouldn't be much transmission out in the community that you can't control. And if we look at the last lockdowns - those particular ones don't seem to have made any difference to the cases that were found or transmission in the community. And the three largest clusters recently - Melbourne with its restaurant one, Sydney with its Berala and also its Avalon one - they didn't go into widespread lockdowns, yet were able to control it and, again, their case finding and testing found all the vast majority of people who were at risk and managed to contain it.

So, lockdowns have a place. If you've got uncontrolled transmission and haven't got good case testing and good case finding, yes, you may well need to put severe restrictions. But we're going to live with this risk for another year or two, even if there's a lot of vaccination. The vaccines will not give us 100% protection against transmitting it. Probably decrease it 50% or more, but not 100%. So we'll have to learn to live with a relative level of risk that controls it - as we've been very successful in Australia, in Northwest Tasmania, in Adelaide, in Queensland - but all of those seem to have been done without the need for additional lockdowns of whole cities or, if it's been done, it hasn't given us, in retrospect, any extra equal protection or more protection.

Coronavirus fragments have been detected in the Mackay North and Cairns Marlin Coast sewage catchments.

Mackay North receives sewage from the suburbs of Beaconsfield, Richmond, Shoal Point, Bucasia, Blacks Beach, Rural View, Eimeo and Dolphin Heads, while Cairns Marlin Coast receives sewage from the suburbs of Barron, Kamerunga, Macalister Range, Yorkeys Knob, Caravonica, Trinity Beach, Smithfield, Palm Cove, Trinity Park, Clifton Beach and Kewarra Beach.

Queensland Chief Health Officer Dr Jeannette Young said continued detections across the state is becoming more concerning.

“We continue to urge anyone with any symptoms, no matter how mild to come forward and get tested,” Dr Young said.

“Symptoms include fever, cough, sore throat, runny nose, fatigue, diarrhoea, nausea or vomiting, and loss of taste or smell.

“This is especially important now more than ever, as we know the new variants emerging overseas are more contagious than previous variants we have seen in Queensland.

“If there is a case we are not yet aware of, it is critical we detect it through our testing mechanisms as quickly as possible to contain any potential spread.

“It is, of course, also possible that this detection relates to previous COVID-19 cases who can shed viral fragments for a couple of months after they are no longer infectious.”

Submarine-like devices are being sent into Adelaide's wastewater network to look for any traces of COVID-19.

There has been regular testing for remnants of coronavirus in targeted areas of the state's sewerage system, as well as at several wastewater treatment plants.

The Department of Health's Principal Water Quality Advisor David Cunliffe says these new smaller devices provide a broader and more acurate picture of exactly what's in the sewage itself.
  
"These devices we can place in the sewer, leave them there for 24 hours, and during that 24 hours the virus attaches to the materials inside the little submarines," he said.

I've got this image now of a whole load of virus fragments banding together and saying if we all charge out the door at the same time we can escape (need to get the timing right and make sure we are all by the door ready for it to open)

-Viral Load

England has begun COVID-19 testing every household in some communities as authorities try to snuff out a new variant of the coronavirus before it undermines the country's nationwide vaccination program.

Officials are dispatching home testing kits and mobile testing units to 80,000 residents of eight areas where the variant, first identified in South Africa, is known to be spreading.

A handful of cases have been detected among people who have had no contact with South Africa or anyone who travelled there.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock said it was "critical" for everyone in Hertfordshire, Surrey, Kent, Walsall, Sefton and the London boroughs of Merton, Haringey and Ealing to stay at home unless travel was absolutely essential.

Call it semantics but I'm fairly sure the 'mystery' the OP referred to was HOW the virus was transmitted, not from whom or where.

"I wouldn't call it mystery transmission, as authorities in both cases are fairly sure they know where each case caught it from. But it's definitely true that these new strains of COVID are causing transmission in ways we haven't seen before."

-Semantics

Yes, but the phrases "mystery cases" or "mystery transmission", as they're traditionally used by authorities, means positive cases that can't be connected to a previous case. In effect they don't know from whom these people caught the virus. Whereas in these cases, authorities believe they can connect the dots.

And SA - the source of transmission in hotel quarantine there also wasn’t ever determined, as far as I know?
And Qld?
Except it keeps happening.

-Again!!

And ditto in recent Qld hotel case .

-Possible