Australia news LIVE: Cameron Smith wins 2022 British Open; rising interest rates to cost taxpayers an extra $13m

Victoria’s virtual emergency department will boost its capacity by hundreds of appointments as the state government looks for ways to reduce the COVID-19 and flu burden on the hospitals.

Premier Daniel Andrews was at the Northern Hospital in Epping today to announce more elements of a $162 million package to reduce strain on the state’s hospital system.

The capacity of Victoria’s virtual emergency department will increase to 500 daily appointments, up from 300, allowing patients to attend a video consultation with a doctor or a nurse from their homes. People living in aged care facilities will now be able to access the program.

Around 30,000 patients have gone through Northern Health’s virtual emergency department since October 2020.

Clinical director of the Victorian Virtual Emergency Department Loren Sher said the program would soon be assisting GPs to get patients early access to COVID-19 antivirals to reduce “unnecessary attendances at hospitals”.

“The numbers are showing 80 per cent of patients who have COVID we were able to keep at home … so we’re getting ambulances back on the road as quickly as possible” she said.

Andrews said it was hoped the virtual ED could increase to see 700 patients by the end of the year.

A new rostering pattern for advanced life support paramedic crews will be trialled across metropolitan Melbourne, and Ambulance Victoria’s offload teams will be expanded to 14 major public hospitals to ensure patients are offloaded quickly and return ambulances to the road.

“The new rosters are about ensuring more flexibility in this system, enabling paramedics to be available at peak pressure points,” Health Minister Mary-Anne Thomas said.

A new real-time data dashboard will be created to give paramedics and healthcare workers an overview of capacity in the state’s hospital system.

Deputy federal opposition leader Sussan Ley says the government’s plan for tackling the cost of living crisis is “not good enough”, after Treasurer Jim Chalmers warned the upcoming debt forecast would be “confronting”.

“When you listen to Jim Chalmers, what you hear is, it’s all too hard and that’s not good enough,” Ley said this afternoon.

“It’s not good enough for everyday Australians who know the cost pressures they are facing, small businesses that I have met here today, for those who are struggling with electricity prices, the cost of doing business, the cost of labour, the cost of food and wages, it is not good enough to hear Jim Chalmers simply say it’s all too hard. Where’s the Labor government’s plan?”

Chalmers, who will hand down the debt update on July 28, said earlier today: “The news in that statement will be, in many ways, confronting when it comes to our expectations of inflation.”

“When it comes to the impact of interest rate rises on growth, when it comes to what this spike in inflation means for real wages,” he said.

“If you think about the consequences of those rising interest rates on the budget, more than a billion dollars this year, more than $5 billion in the last year ... these are not small amounts of money.

“The key task of every budget is to make sure that we are getting maximum bang for buck from taxpayers’ dollars, which are costing more and more to service because every additional dollar in the budget is a borrowed dollar.”

with AAP

There were 39,027 new COVID-19 cases and 27 deaths recorded nationally in the latest reporting period.

There are currently nearly 5,000 people in hospital and 154 people being treated for the virus in intensive care.

The latest figures come as Western Australia reached its millionth case.

South Australia also recorded a surge in cases, with 306 people in hospital with the virus - the first time the state has had more than 300 COVID-19 cases in hospital.

There were a total of 4053 new cases recorded in South Australia in the latest reporting period, with genome sampling indicating more than 65 per cent of the cases were the new BA4 and BA5 strains.

So far in the pandemic, Australia has recorded a total of more than 8.7 million cases and about 10,620 deaths.

with AAP

Doctors have questioned comments by NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet about the relative severity of COVID-19 and influenza, as the state leader pushes for isolation requirements to be reconsidered at the end of the BA.4 and BA.5 wave.

In an interview with 2GB earlier today, Perrottet remarked that “at the moment, the current strand of flu is more severe than the current strands of COVID”.

However, with 113 influenza deaths in 2022 from 187,431 laboratory-confirmed cases nationally compared to 1383 deaths and 1,030,094 cases of COVID-19 this month, ANU infectious diseases expert Sanjaya Senanayake said it was clear the Omicron variant of COVID-19 still had a higher death rate.

“You can say COVID cases are being undercounted, but the same applies for flu,” he said.

Professor Vasi Naganathan, president of the Australian & New Zealand Society for Geriatric Medicine, said he also believed the evidence, including data abroad, indicated COVID-19 was a more severe infection than influenza in adults.

In the week ending July 9 there were 769 people with COVID-19 admitted to NSW hospitals, compared to 84 people admitted with influenza-like illness.

“We have experience from when we had a big influenza outbreak in 2017, and we are not seeing that in the hospitals,” Naganathan said.

Former Victorian Liberal premier Denis Napthine has resigned as chair of the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA), three months after he was appointed to a three-year term by the former Morrison government.

His resignation comes one month after the agency’s chief executive, Martin Hoffman, agreed to step down, clearing the way for Labor to overhaul the scheme and its top brass.

In February, Bill Shorten, then-opposition spokesman for the NDIS, called Napthine’s appointment a “disgrace”.

As the minister now responsible for the agency, Shorten today confirmed he had received Napthine’s resignation and thanked him for his service in a brief statement, referring to him as a “committed advocate for the NDIS”.

“I also wish to acknowledge his work in reaching an agreement with the Gillard Labor government to establish the National Disability Insurance Scheme in Victoria,” he said.

Board member Jim Minto will act as NDIA chair until a new chair is appointed.

WA Health Minister Amber-Jade Sanderson is due to provide a COVID-19 update shortly.

As mentioned earlier, WA reached 1 million total COVID-19 cases earlier this morning.

Watch live below.

Good afternoon, and thanks for reading our live coverage today.

If you’re just joining us or returning after a busy morning, here’s what you need to know:

• Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has left the door open to a future cut in the length of the COVID-19 isolation period after the winter wave. “Now is certainly not the time,” he told Adelaide radio station 5AA this morning. “[But] that’s something that health officials will continue to look at.”
• NSW reported 9761 official cases of COVID-19 this morning and five additional deaths. In Victoria, those figures were 10,251 cases and 18 deaths respectively. Queensland recorded 6682 new cases and Western Australia today ticked over 1 million cases since the beginning of the pandemic.
• Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen says Labor will accept “sensible suggestions” when it comes to the government’s climate change bill. The federal government wants to legislate a 43 per cent emissions reduction target by 2030. The Greens and teal independents have called for higher targets.
• Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers says people can expect cost-of-living relief in the upcoming budget. This week, we’ve learnt that rising interest rates will cost taxpayers an extra $13 billion when it comes to paying down government debt.
• During the early hours of this morning, professional golfer Cameron Smith became the first Australian to win the British Open since 1993. The Aussie managed to fend off former world No.1 Rory McIlroy from Northern Ireland.
• And in international news, parts of Europe are battling heatwaves and wildfires. More than 14,000 people have been evacuated from France’s south-west due to wildfires. One person, a firefighter, has been confirmed dead due to the fires in Spain. Meanwhile, more than 600 people in Portugal have died from heat over the past week.

I’m signing off the blog for now, but will be back on deck bright and early tomorrow. Pallavi Singhal will be with you for the rest of the afternoon.

Enjoy the rest of your day.

Western Australia has recorded two grim COVID-19 records today, reaching both its millionth case and 400 hospital admissions as a new coronavirus wave washes over the state.

The surge in cases and hospitalisations comes as the national debate over masks heats up while hospitals around the country grapple with sharp rises in COVID-19 and other respiratory illnesses.

WA Health reported 5514 new cases at 6pm on Sunday night, taking the state’s total recorded cases since the pandemic began to 1,003,678.

The number of people in hospitals with COVID-19 surpassed 400 for the first time, while 19 were in ICU with the virus.

Read the full story here.