Victoria
Around 100 people gathered in Dandenong yesterday evening in protest of COVID-19 restrictions. Four people were arrested and police were forced to use pepper spray in a standoff with anti-lockdown protesters.
Victoria records 113 new cases and 23 deaths taking the Victorian death toll to 462.
Premier Dan Andrews is confident that restrictions will be eased soon.
“We quite soon hope to be able to give people a road map, a clear plan about what coming out of stage four looks like, what opening up looks like, what finding COVID-normal looks like,” he said.
Australia
In Sydney, gym clusters are growing with 5 of today’s 9 new cases linked to the CBD gyms.
In Queensland some prisons filled with over 7000 prisoners are in a full lockdown from today after an Corrective Services officer tested positive for COVID-19.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said they have put in some precautions because he trained some recruits.
“As a precaution some of our corrective service facilities have gone into lockdown,” she said.
Movement has been restricted for the prisoners and they have been instructed to stay in their cells.
United Kingdom
A COVID-19 vaccine from an Oxford and AstraZeneca trial could go to regulators by the end of this year. The Oxford vaccine produced an immune response in its first human trials placing themselves first in the race for a vaccine.
Oxford had enrolled about 20,000 people in trials across Britain, Brazil and South Africa, with AstraZeneca leading a US trial of 30,000 people.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has announced a formal letter of interest and has secured the rights to manufacture millions of doses of the potential vaccine if trials were successful.
Scott Morrison called the Oxford vaccine “one of the most advanced and promising in the world” and said the vaccine would be free for Australians.
The UK currently have 327,000 active cases.
United States of America
America has reached 5.83 million cases as the death toll of 180,000 continues to rise.
A cluster of confirmed cases in Massachusetts has been traced back to a bachelorette party held in Rhode Island last month.
Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker referred to the event when discussing the importance of social distancing.
“Everyone who went to that wedding except one tested positive for COVID,” he said.
Europe
Europe currently has a total of 3.4 million cases, with the countries reporting the most cases being Russia (966,000), Spain (412,000), Italy (260,000) and France (248,000).
Globally, there has been 24 million reported cases with 15 million of those having recovered. The worldwide death toll is over 800,000.
Read more HERE.
Photo: Novel Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 by NIAID-RML available HERE and used under a Public Domain License. The Image has not been modified.
