Australia news LIVE Dominic Perrottet becomes next NSW premier as state records 608 new COVID-19 cases seven deaths Victoria sets national daily record with 1763 new cases four deaths

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Victorian Premier Dan Andrews and Health Department secretaries Kate Matson and Naomi Bromley are due to provide a coronavirus update from 11am AEDT.

Watch live below.

Meanwhile, Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young are due to hold a press conference at the same time.

Watch that press conference below.

And for our NSW viewers, there is no coronavirus press conference today. However, it’s expected that NSW Health will announce the numbers via a Facebook livestream closer to 11am exactly (Sydney time).

Please refresh your browser closer to that time. The social media stream is usually not available until 11am on the dot, but we will endeavour to embed it here.

The seven-day lockdown of the Latrobe Valley in regional Victoria will end at midnight this evening, the state’s Premier Daniel Andrews has confirmed.

“There are some new cases in Latrobe today … but we feel that we have a good understanding of that outbreak, and we can move Latrobe back to the regional Victorian settings from midnight tonight,” Mr Andrews said during today’s coronavirus update.

“So I’m very grateful to everybody across the Latrobe city for the contribution they’ve made.”

Victorian Premier Dan Andrews. Credit:Chris Hopkins

Meanwhile, Victorian health authorities are going to start providing postcode-based COVID-19 vaccination data.

Premier Daniel Andrews says authorities will be targeting 27 priority suburbs initially, “where vaccination rates are not as high as we would like”.

“We do need to go even a step further, and not just target a local government area but target individual postcodes â€" those 27 postcodes where the current first dose coverage rates are under 75 per cent,” Mr Andrews said.

“We’re going to work to try and get those up as high as we possibly can.”

Among the suburbs are Campbellfield, St Kilda, Kensington and Frankston North.

Queensland has reported two new cases of COVID-19, but the state has once again avoided going into lockdown.

One of the new cases is a 3-year-old girl who is a household contact of a person related to the aviation training cluster, with Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young saying she was confident everyone who was at risk from that outbreak was now in quarantine.

The other case is a 19-year-old woman who normally lives in Queensland but travelled to Victoria and was given an exemption to return and go into hotel quarantine.

The woman received a notification on the flight from Melbourne that she was a positive confirmed case, with Queensland Health meeting her at the airport and taking her to hospital.

The case is not believed to pose a risk to the Queensland community.

Brisbane was yet again on high alert on Monday after a masseuse in her 50s was infectious in the community for 10 days, with the authority unable to link her case to any existing clusters.

Dr Young said contact tracers were continuing to work through all the masseuse’s contacts through the QR code check-in process and the businesses she attended to check whether there were any new cases.

NSW has reported 608 new local coronavirus cases, as well as seven additional deaths from the virus.

There were 85,642 tests reported to 8pm Monday.

“We’re seeing a decline in case numbers in recent days, but we’ve also seen a slight decline in testing,” NSW Health’s Dr Jeremy McAnulty said, encouraging people to continue to look out for respiratory symptoms even as vaccination rates increased.

According to NSW Health, 67.5 per cent of people aged 16 and over are fully vaccinated and 88.5 per cent have received a first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine as of yesterday morning.

Today’s reported deaths range in age from a person in their 50s to a person in their 80s and included five people from south-west Sydney, one from western Sydney and a person from Dubbo.

Five were not vaccinated and two had received one dose.

There are 978 COVID-19 cases admitted in hospital as of today, including 190 in intensive care, 94 of whom require ventilation.

Of the 190 people who are in intensive care, 136 are not vaccinated and 39 people have received one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, Dr McAnulty said.

As reported earlier, four Victorians have died with COVID-19: a man in 80s from Whittlesea, a woman in her 70s from Hume, a man in 60s from Whitehorse and a woman in her 60s from Banyule.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said there are 507 people in hospital in the state with COVID-19. Of those, 101 are in intensive care and 66 are on a ventilator.

Of the people who were in hospital as of Monday, 66 per cent were unvaccinated, 28 per cent had one dose, and only six per cent were fully vaccinated.

“Again, the numbers tell the clearest of stories,” the Premier said.

“If you are vaccinated, your likelihood of being gravely ill, your likelihood of finishing up in hospital is massively reduced.”

On Monday, more than 96,000 people booked in to receive a COVID-19 vaccine in Victoria, 82,000 of which were for a second dose.

The Premier said Monday was one of the largest days ever in the state for vaccine bookings.

More than 27,000 bookings for first doses of Moderna vaccines are currently available in state-run clinics.

Experts will be watching Victoria’s COVID-19 hospitalisation rates very closely in the coming days to determine whether they could jeopardise the state’s exit from lockdown.

Deakin University’s chair in epidemiology Catherine Bennett said she hoped that, despite Victoria reporting a national record of 1763 new cases on today, “there will be a bigger wedge between case numbers and hospitalisation” given vaccination rates.

Deakin University chair of epidemiology Catherine Bennett.Credit:Jason South

She said the spike in case numbers was “probably a combination of people not fully abiding by the rules”, with recent protests and household gatherings.

“We might be seeing more cases but if a few more of them have had at least their first dose, it might mean they don’t translate to hospitals,” Professor Bennett told 3AW’s breakfast program.

“So far, that’s kind of where we’re sitting with the Burnet modelling, where we’re a bit down on the modelling that they’ve predicted for hospital.

“But at the same time, that’s not a given at this stage. There is a one or so week lag, sometimes more, before people actually impact on hospitals after they’re picked up as a case.

“It’s often the second week where your illness becomes serious enough to need hospitalisation.”

NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet has won the ballot to become the state’s next premier with 39 votes to five.

Mr Perrottet won the ballot against Planning Minister Rob Stokes at a party room meeting of Liberal MPs at NSW Parliament House this morning. The vote followed the shock resignation of Gladys Berejiklian as premier on Friday.

Dominic Perrottet addressing the media on Monday. Credit:Nick Moir

Ms Berejiklian quit as premier and announced she would leave NSW Parliament after the Independent Commission Against Corruption said it was investigating whether she breached the public trust or encouraged the occurrence of corrupt conduct during her secret relationship with disgraced former MP Daryl Maguire.

NSW Liberal MPs have arrived for today’s party room ballot to elect Gladys Berejiklian’s replacement.

As reported earlier, this morning’s meeting was due to start at 10am. However, it was delayed somewhat due to long testing queues (parliamentary rules state that anyone entering NSW Parliament must have a rapid antigen test).

Dominic Perrottet arrives for today’s party room ballot. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer

Voting is now underway for the 46th premier of NSW.

Gladys Berejiklian has not attended the party room meeting today and will not be voting. It had been expected Ms Berejiklian would attend to address the party for the final time as leader.

Facebook’s worldwide outage appears to be largely resolved.

The social media giant and its sister platforms Instagram and WhatsApp are now working for most Australian users. The outage began around 2.30am AEDT and last for more than six hours.

During that time, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s personal wealth plummeted by billions of dollars.

Read more about the outages here.

Three Ambulance Victoria paramedics have tested positive for COVID-19.

Two of the paramedics were not working while they were infectious, but the third paramedic was asymptomatic and working.

They were wearing full PPE at the time and abiding by COVID-safe protocols. Anyone who was in contact with the paramedic while they were infectious has been asked to get tested and isolate.

“This is just the first time in 2021 that a paramedic has returned a positive test, which shows how our policies and procedures to protect paramedics and patients are working,” an Ambulance Victoria spokesperson said.

“The paramedics are doing well and we are supporting them to isolate and recover safely.

“Contact tracing has been completed and the paramedics and their close contacts are isolating as required.”

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