Australia news LIVE Victoria records 22 new local COVID-19 cases NSW ACT infections continue to grow extra Pfizer jabs touch down

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NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian, Health Minister Brad Hazzard and Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant are due to provide a coronavirus update from 11am AEST.

Watch live below.

Meanwhile, Northern Territory Chief Minister Michael Gunner is holding a press conference at the same time.

We’re told the press conference is COVID-19 related.

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School staff in Sydney’s hotspot areas â€" which include eight west and south-west Sydney local government areas as well as several suburbs around Penrith â€" have been told they will receive priority access to COVID-19 vaccines from today.

Teachers received an email from education department officials last night, telling them NSW Health had included all school staff in affected LGAs in a new priority vaccination program.

A nurse prepares a shot of Pfizer vaccine. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

“The priority program â€" which involves both the AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines â€" also applies to early childhood staff in these areas. It runs from Monday 16 August through to Sunday 22 August,” the email said.

“We are working hard to ensure all colleagues in other areas of Greater Sydney, and across the State, are considered in further priority access programs. Having a vaccination is one of the best ways to protect you and your loved ones â€" and our school communities â€" against COVID-19.”

School staff were told their invitation could not be forwarded to anyone else, and that they would be required to bring photo ID and proof of where they worked on the day. Public school teachers will be able to use up to two hours of special vaccine leave.

Unions have been demanding priority access for teachers for months. As the current outbreak has escalated, several NSW schools have been temporarily closing each week due to positive cases in their communities, and the Catholic school sector last week asked Premier Gladys Berejiklian to organise mass vaccination days for teachers at state hubs.

This new program follows a separate priority vaccine drive that invited almost 13,000 teachers and school staff from the Fairfield, Canterbury-Bankstown and Liverpool local government areas to get vaccinated last month. Those teachers will again be eligible under this new program.

However, the education department has admitted it has no way of knowing how many of its staff have been vaccinated.

Nationals Senator Matthew Canavan has queried whether the Taliban would commit to net zero emissions, days after criticising climate scientists of producing “fear porn”.

Earlier this morning, Senator Canavan, who is the deputy leader of the Nationals in the Senate, wrote on Twitter: “Does anyone know whether the Taliban will sign up to net zero?”

Nationals MP Darren Chester has labelled a colleague’s comments about Afghanistan “disrespectful” in light of the lives lost in Australia’s longest conflict. Credit:Brook Mitchell

The social media comment highlights the monumental challenge the federal government faces to reach consensus over carbon emission reductions.

Last week, the Queensland Senator accused the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of spreading “fear porn” and ruled out supporting the phase-out of emissions. The IPCC produced a landmark report, compiled by 234 international scientists, which said a rapid reduction in emissions was necessary over the next 10 years to avoid the most damaging impacts of climate change.

The federal government has yet to set a net zero deadline but has said this will be “preferably” by 2050 and has committed to a 26 per cent cut by 2030 from 2005 levels.

Nationals MP Darren Chester hit back at his colleague Senator Canavan, saying he “doesn’t speak for me”.

“This tweet is offensive, disrespectful and totally lacking in any compassion for the 41 brave Australians who lost their lives, the families who grieve for them, the 39,000 Australians who served in this conflict, and the people of Afghanistan,” he wrote on Twitter.

Queensland Chief Health Officer Jeanette Young says the risk of COVID-19 jumping into Queensland from NSW could not be understated.

At this morning’s coronavirus update, Dr Young said sewage testing had detected the virus in northern NSW shires, which indicated to her it was circulating in those communities.

Queensland Chief Health Officer Dr Jeannette Young wants essential workers who live in NSW but work in Queensland to have had at least one COVID-19 vaccine by Friday. Credit:Getty

“It is really important for anyone who usually comes across the border from NSW into Queensland … that they should only cross the border if it is absolutely essential,” Dr Young said.

She said if someone from the border region of NSW needed to cross into Queensland or vice versa they must have at least one dose of vaccine by Friday, and then get their second dose as soon as possible.

“Most of these people would have already had their first dose, they are police, firefighters, that sort of thing, but any who haven’t, they must do that now,” she said.

Queensland has recorded a double doughnut day in what the state government has dubbed a “mighty effort” in suppressing the recent outbreak.

There are no cases in either the community or in hotel quarantine recorded today. As you might recall, much of south-east Queensland was in lockdown recently after the virus spread through half a dozen schools in Brisbane.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the result was fantastic news, but again warned about the possibility of coronavirus spreading across the NSW border.

She said cross-border movement needs to be kept to a minimum, and again warned that police would be enforcing the border both on land and in the air.

“These strict border measures are necessary and they will be enforced. If you do not need to travel, do not travel.”

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has just finished providing a coronavirus update.

We’ll have the playback version with you shortly.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has urged Australians in lockdown to stay at home, and only go out when necessary, to avoid a COVID-19 “horror show”, as seen in other parts of the world including the southern United States.

“There’s no alternative, I wish it were different. But this is what we have to do to push through,” he told radio station 2GB earlier this morning.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has urged people currently in lockdown to stay at home. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

“Months ahead from now, once we get to those higher vaccination rates, we will look back at this time, if we’ve really tried to make this lockdown work in NSW and protected the most vulnerable in our community, and the Indigenous populations in particular and the elderly, then we’ll be thankful we did.

“This is the challenge of our generation. Previous generations have gone through Depressions, they’ve gone through wars, and what our challenge is and our generation is â€" stay at home.”

Mr Morrison said the Delta strain of COVID-19 had been the “game-changer”.

“The idea that you can just let this thing rip is absurd. Just as absurd is the idea that you can get to COVID zero. They’re both extreme positions, they’re both absurd.

“We’ll just stay in the sensible centre ground here which is where you get people vaccinated, you put in place the lockdowns that are necessary to deal with the Delta strain.”

He conceded the vaccine rollout program had “early setbacks” but welcomed the arrival of one million Pfizer doses from Poland, more than half of which will be put to use in NSW.

“I was tracking that flight pretty carefully ... I text the Premier [Gladys Berejiklian] as soon as I knew it had left, because we’ve had a few problems in the past,” Mr Morrison said.“So this time, it got out, and here we are.”

A primary school in the NSW Central West has been closed for the second time in a week after additional members of the school community tested positive.

Dubbo West Public School will be closed on Monday and Tuesday this week. The school previously shut on Friday after a case was identified in a student.

“The NSW Department of Education and NSW Health have been working closely to ensure the health and safety of all students and staff is maintained,” a NSW Education spokesperson said.

“This work has included identifying close contacts and communicating directly with them regarding their requirement to self-isolate.”

A number of NSW schools have shut today after COVID-19 cases were identified in the community.

The senior campus of MLC School, in Sydney’s inner west, was shut after two members of the school community who had been on-site tested positive. Blacktown North Public School, in the city’s west, is also non-operational today after a case in the community.

A leading epidemiologist has poured cold water on suggestions that a curfew would be effective in stopping social mixing in Melbourne, after Premier Daniel Andrews lambasted those breaking the rules over the weekend.

While thousands of Melburnians took the opportunity to safely exercise in the sun across the weekend, Victoria Police has singled out those loitering outside hospitality venues and undertaking “pub crawls”

A large engagement party also took place in Melbourne’s south-eastern suburbs mid-last week against COVID-19 directions.

In this picture, supplied by a reader, people gather in groups over the weekend in Acland Street, St Kilda.

Professor Jodie McVernon, the director of epidemiology at Melbourne’s Doherty Institute, said she wasn’t sure that a curfew would fix the problem.

“Personally I’m not aware of any evidence that proves that curfews per se are particularly efficacious,” she told the ABC’s Radio National.

“Clearly we need the public to cooperate with these measures if they’re to be effective.”

Yesterday, Mr Andrews said no one should be bending the two-hour exercise restrictions and spending hours in parks or streets catching up with people. He added that it made the jobs of contact tracers “much, much harder”.

A 15-year-old Sydney boy, who was positive for COVID-19, has died after being admitted to hospital with a life-threatening bacterial infection.

Osama Suduh, a student of Kingsgrove North High School in Sydney’s south west, had been at the Sydney’s Children’s Hospital at Randwick, in the city’s east, with pneumococcal meningitis.

Speaking on Seven’s Sunrise program on Monday, Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce said: “What an incredible tragedy it was for that young man to die last night.”

NSW Health and the Sydney’s Children Hospital have been contacted for comment.

Read the full story here.

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