An Important News Australia

Coronavirus: National Cabinet agrees to continue COVID-19 suppression plan

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the nation’s leaders have given another “affirmation” of a COVID-19 suppression strategy.
Today’s National Cabinet focused on the rise in coronavirus numbers across New South Wales and Victoria, however Mr Morrison said there was some good news for the two states today.
Read live updates of the coronavirus situation across Australia here
“While there is some better news today out of Victoria, that is not something that we can assume will continue. And so we must maintain the full force of effort in Victoria,” he said.
“In NSW, the news is better. I think what this demonstrates is that we’re in this fight and in some fights, we’ll be behind and in some fights we’ll be ahead.”
“We’re always in the fight in Australia.”
Mr Morrison said the goal of leaders is no community transmission.
“There will always be cases that come because Australia has not completely shut itself off from the world. To do so would be reckless,” he said.
“But that no community transmission, when the vast majority of states and territories have been at now effectively for some time … that’s certainly where we want to get back to in Victoria and NSW, and that’s where our efforts are focused.”
Acting Chief Medical Officer Professor Paul Kelly said Australia still needs to “trace down every case, every day”.
“What we discussed in National Cabinet today was the normal update of the epidemiological situation in terms of the COVID-19 pandemic here in Australia,” Professor Kelly said.
He said the goal of the reaffirmed suppression strategy is zero community transmission.
“There are other measure that is may need to support the public health approach and personal protective measure, and that always has been part of the suppression strategy with that aim of no community transmission. That’s our ultimate goal,” he said.
“Six out of eight jurisdictions are in that spot at the moment and our absolute focus now is to continue to work particularly with Victoria to get back to that situation.”
He’s also offered more information on the enhanced data metrics the National Cabinet today agreed to implement.
“It’s really about cases, how long between the test being done to the test result being relatable? We will want that regularly from all of the states and territories to make sure that that testing regime is remaining as it should be,” Professor Kelly said.
“How long from when that test is made available to the local authority until that case is contacted?
“And the aim there, absolutely, to really stress it, is every case, every day. So we’re really pushing hard and making sure that information is available.”