Premier’s Update – Thursday

THE Premier said more than 500 businesses have registered to help provide medical equipment need during the next few months she thanked them for responding to the “call to arms” and people who are adhering to the health orders.

“The reason we have these restrictions is to make sure our health system can cope when there are more people going into our ICU’s, so we are using this time to really redouble our efforts and increase capacity in our hospital system to make sure it can cope when more people present,” said Gladys Berejiklian.

Key Points:

• Another person has died from the virus overnight – a 67 year old woman from Orange.
• The health orders have a 90 day time frame.
• Three tickets for breaching orders have been issued in the last 24 hours.
• Construction sites will be allowed to operate on public holidays and weekends.
• “Dark kitchens” can continue to make takeaway food and supply hospitals and aged care facilities.
• Food vans can operate from any land, as long as they have permission from the land owner.

Health Report:

Dr Jeremy McAnulty, confirmed there are 2,289 cases, 116 new cases were confirmed in the last 24 hours, 10 people have died including a 67 year old woman in Orange yesterday.

There were 1,419 cases were overseas acquired, 467 acquired locally, 307 acquired locally with no known source, 105 are being investigated, 43 people are in intensive care, including 20 people requiring ventilators.

Police Report:

Commissioner Mick Fuller, said there were 3,557 people quarantined in hotels, 500 people are expected to arrive today and 200 soldiers returning from the Middle East will also return to hotel quarantine. 

The Commissioner said they were continuing to fine tune the process to “make sensible decisions”, such as moving seven families to apartments and allowing a man who is a quadriplegic to self-isolate at home.

There were three tickets issued in the last 24 hours in relation to isolation, including one man who was with three other man drinking in a park and refused to move on.

A mother breast feeding her baby on a bench in a park was asked to move on, the Commissioner explained, “if I said it was ok to sit on a park bench then everyone’s going to go to the park and we’re going to end up back where we started.”

There have been in the order of thousands of calls made to CrimeStoppers of people reporting breaches of self-isolation.

The Commissioner confirmed the health orders are in place for a period of 90 days, “and I certainly won’t be seeking an extension and hopefully people will have gotten the message by then and we won’t be talking about the powers, we’ll just be talking about what does it look like coming out of this.”

Planning Update:

The Minister for Planning Rob Stokes, announced planning laws have been modified to help people in work keep safe.

Construction sites can now operate on public holidays and weekends, in the same way they can work during the week, which is designed to make social distancing easier to achieve and help boost productivity.

Restaurants and catering businesses, known as “dark kitchens” which are commercial kitchens without an eating component, can continue to prepare meals for home delivery services, health care facilities or aged care, to help more of the workforce stay safely employed.

Food trucks can also operate from any land, as long as they have land-owner consent.