World 4.1 million UK 220K+ Italy 220K+ Russia 210K+
Over 150,000 Victorians have been tested for coronavirus over the past two weeks. Twenty people who were asymptomatic were detected over recent days who would not have been identified without this extra screening. Victoria will now expand testing further, aiming to test another 150,000 people by the end of May. Our state has the tightest restrictions of any state in Australia, but today Dan Andrews has announced that some are being lifted from this Wednesday. Happily, this includes golf.
Other states have already begun lifting restrictions, as have a number of countries around the world. There have been new outbreaks over the weekend in South Korea and Germany after restrictions were eased. We need to be extremely careful.
There are now around 50 countries with more cases of coronavirus than Australia. The top ten are the USA, Spain, UK, Italy, Russia, France, Germany, Brazil, Turkey and Iran. Despite this, some of these countries have announced they are starting to ease restrictions. There’s been a huge backlash against Boris Johnson’s announcement to ease restrictions in the UK.
Australia’s ‘growth factor’ has been climbing over the past week or so. We need to keep this number under one to know we are getting on top of the spread of the virus. It’s been over one for the past week, mostly due to a cluster of cases stemming from Cedar Meats in Melbourne. It’s now at 1.07. The highest it has been is 1.75 in early March, and the lowest was 0.76 on February 12. It did get down to 0.86 in late April, but has been climbing ever since.
In more news from the US capital, 11 members of the secret service have tested positive to coronavirus and Ivanka Trump’s personal assistant has tested positive too.
This comes after the recent announcement that a personal valet to Lord Tan Dump has tested positive to coronavirus as has Vice President’s Press Secretary, Katie Miller. Her husband, Stephen Miller is a top adviser to the President.