Prime Minister
EDWINA BARTHOLOMEW: Good morning to you, Prime Minister. Those figures, 200,000 cases, potentially, I think we all understand the need for personal responsibility and living with the virus, but they are worrying for so many Australians. Should there be some consistency now across the country in terms of mask rules and check-ins remaining in place to keep us safe?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, they’re the things we’ll be working on today, and we've got some clear advice from the medical expert panel, but I just want to assure people - and the Chief Medical Officer has already issued a statement last night - the modelling that's been reported is a, is a, is a very unlikely, extreme case scenario that assumes that nobody does anything, nobody gets boosters, there’s, there are no changes that take place, no one exercises common sense. So, we know, we saw similar numbers at the start of the COVID pandemic, which were never realised. So I, the Chief Medical Officer and I just want to assure people that those sort of numbers aren’t what we’re expecting. They are extreme case scenarios. But what all of this work tells us that is necessary is, of course, we've got to go out there and we've got to get those boosters. We had over 200,000 vaccines that were done yesterday. That's more than doubled over the course of the last two weeks. That's very important. And, of course, we've kept all the primary care networks in place for GPs and pharmacists. I want to thank everybody for going out there, and particularly our GPs and pharmacists. What we need to add back into the booster program now are those state clinics, which were so important, you know, during the big element of the vaccine program a few months ago, and we'll be talking about getting those back on. The other thing that everybody needs to do is, as you say, we've got to exercise this common sense. It's it's like wearing sunscreen and a hat. We were talking about that yesterday, with the SunSmart campaign. You know, wear a mask indoors in public areas, wash your hands, particularly for young people, can I encourage you on this. Because that is where Omicron is moving most rapidly - amongst young people. And so just being conscious of these very sensible things, particularly if you're going to be in contact with elderly people. This is just common sense and good responsibility, and we’ll work closely together with the states and territories today to get as much commonality as we can. But I would stress, in most of the states and territories the necessary precautions are in place. And, of course, in states like ours here in New South Wales, Victoria, then we’ll need to be looking carefully at those. But personal responsibility and boosters, these are very important, and getting some commonality between states and territories.
BARTHOLOMEW: We’re certainly seeing a lot of people do that, aren’t we - choosing to wear a mask, even though they don't have to.
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah.
BARTHOLOMEW: In New South Wales alone …
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah they don’t have to be told to do everything, Australians don’t have to be told to do everything. They can …
BARTHOLOMEW: Not all the time.
PRIME MINISTER: … make these choices.
BARTHOLOMEW: In New South Wales alone, Prime Minister, though, there are 1,400 health care workers, we heard from the Minister, Health Minister yesterday, now unable to work because they have COVID or forced to isolate. So can our health system cope with these sorts of rising case numbers?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, what we're already seeing is the incidence of serious disease from Omicron it hasn't been what we've seen in other cases. Our our ICU rates - and that's the most important thing, the case numbers are no longer the issue - the issue is ICU, people in hospital, people with severe disease. That's why the booster program at the moment, more than 50 per cent of those who are eligible for that booster have received it. And that's fantastic. Australians are responding and we're ramping that up, as we have over these last couple of weeks in response. But we're protecting particularly the most elderly, as we did at the start of the pandemic. And that's what saved lives. The fact that we got all our aged care residents vaccinated. The fact is the vast majority of those who have had their booster are actually older Australians who are most vulnerable. And so we need to keep that going and just patiently, but quickly, move through and getting this these boosters into arms.
MATT SHIRVINGTON: But Prime Minister, the boosters is definitely one thing. The other thing is monitoring with testing. This morning, Joe Biden announced that Americans will have access to half a billion free at-home rapid tests. They're already free in the UK. Are you considering doing the same here?
PRIME MINISTER: Yeah, well, look, we're looking at all of these options, and we've never had a set and forget policy when it comes to managing the pandemic, as I think people have seen - everything from JobKeeper, the COVID Disaster Payments, the support we're providing to pharmacists and GPs for the vaccination program. I mean, we pay the states to deliver those vaccines. I don’t know if people know that. We just don't pay for the vaccines for them to deliver, we actually pay the states and territories to actually administer them as well. $33 billion in an additional investment that the Commonwealth, our Government, has put in to to support the states and territories, but more broadly, the health system, and we are watching those those rates in hospitals. At the moment, they're performing very well. Remember, Victoria has had over a thousand cases a day for some time now, and their system, and their hospital system is standing up very well. The same is true here in New South Wales. One of the advantages we've got is the time of year. Unlike overseas in the northern hemisphere where they’re in winter, we’re in summer. And that means you can meet outdoors. And I’d say, particularly to younger people, where you can, you know, it's a, it's a beautiful time of the year, do it outside. But remember the other health road - wear a hat and wear the sunscreen, like I was talking about with SunSmart yesterday.
BARTHOLOMEW: I think lots lots of people have got that message, certainly for their Christmas plans, Prime Minister. But with the rapid antigen tests, people can’t access them anywhere, and they’re clogging up those those lines. We're seeing a clinic in Albert Park already close this morning before it even opened. So do we have a stockpile of those? Is that something, I know a lot of money has been given out already, and could we give it, could we give some more?
PRIME MINISTER: No, so we're considering all of those, and that's exactly what we're looking at. But I would also stress we've got to get some commonality between the states and territories about how they're requiring these PCR tests in particular. Now, they're the most important tests, and the requirements for people to be getting these to travel at the moment, that is putting enormous pressure, particularly on New South Wales and in Victoria, and that's a big reason you’re seeing a lot of those queues. And the states are going to have to talk to each other also about that, because decisions being made in one state are impacting on the testing resources in other states. And, so, they’re the practical issues that we'll have to talk through today. But the role that the rapid antigen testing can play in relieving that burden, particularly, say, rapid antigen testing that can be made available that can enable people to travel. I mean, we've got about 98 per cent of people who are coming into this country at the moment from overseas, they’re double vaccinated, and we're not seeing any great number of cases come through that. Omicron is in Australia. The idea that you're going to suppress it at any extreme level or you're going to eliminate it, that's nonsense. Not going to happen. We have to live with it and we have to just stay calm, follow good common sense behaviours, get boosted, ramp all that up again. As I said, in the space of just two weeks, we've more than doubled the rate again of vaccinations. Omicron’s only been in Australia for less than a month now, but it is escalating. The maths of this does mean that cases will rise. We just have to focus on the things that we can do about it, all of us - governments and the public in a partnership, like we've always done, which has given us the lowest death rates, one of the strongest economies and one of the highest vaccination rates in the world.
SHIRVINGTON: Prime Minister, I hope you get some good outcomes from this National Cabinet meeting and some unity amongst the state premiers as well. Thanks for your time.
PRIME MINISTER: Thank you very much. We'll be working very hard on it and all through the break.