Blog Day 95: Friday 26 June 2020

First the good news, it has been confirmed that the Shrine is reopening on Wednesday 1st July albeit with pretty strict conditions.  Admission will be limited to 20 visitors at a time with visitor details to be recorded.  Visitors will have to follow a one way path starting in the visitor centre and exiting via the Sanctuary.  Access to the galleries will only be available to pre-booked groups of up to 10 visitors.  

Apparently there are some school groups that have booked to visit the Shrine in term three, however while the number of school groups are low the school tours will be handled by the education staff, not volunteers.  

There is no timeframe given for the return of the volunteers.  I daresay that the expected number of visitors and school groups doesn't warrant the extra layer of complexity that the return of the volunteers would create.  Remember, most of the volunteers are of the older generation (I am one of the youngest) and many of them travel to the Shrine by public transport which also means that they are travelling in and out of the CBD.  Also, but keep this to yourselves, some of the volunteers (not the Thursday afternoon shift obviously) don't follow instructions terribly well.

Now the bad news.  A further 30 new infections in Victoria in the last 24 hours.  This news was presented to us this morning by the state Deputy Chief Medical Officer and unofficial president of the Captain Cook appreciation society.  The 30 new infections are made up of the usual culprits of family transmission, escapees from quarantine transmission, infected returning travelers and the big concerning one, the we don't have any idea transmission. 

We have the farcical situation with the Federal Government offering the state government military support.  In 24 hours we went from not wanting any military assistance to accepting 1,000 ADF personnel to undertake "important and essential tasks" to not wanting any and finally accepting less than 200.  Although nobody in the state government is able to tell us what they are going to do.

We were going to use the ADF to bolster security at the various quarantine hotels and to assist with the transport of people from the airport to the quarantine hotels.  Neither of those is going ahead, security at the hotels is being left in the hands of the incompetent private security people.

Of course the state government (read DD) is not telling anybody why the change of mind and which pressure groups caused it - unions or lefties, maybe a combination of both.

Corona Virus Daily Stats: Day 172

Vic: 1,947 infected (+30 since yesterday) - 20 deaths (increase 0)

Aus: 7,595 infected (+38 since yesterday) - 104 deaths (increase 0)

Aus: 6,924 recovered - current hospital 16 (+/-0), current ICU 2 (+/-0), current hospital Vic 7 (+/-0), current ICU Vic 2 (+/- 0)

World: 9,711,314 infected - 491,797 deaths (increase 6,825)