National Cabinet encourages businesses to be prepared for reopening

Prime Minister Scott Morrison spoke today following a National Cabinet meeting and declared his intention to help prepare Australians to go back to work in a COVID-19 safe environment and get the economy back to a more sustainable level.

“The chair of the National COVID-19 Coordination Commission, Mr Neville Power, briefed National Cabinet on the importance of a proactive and consistent approach to supporting businesses and workers to safely return to work – drawing on the National COVID-19 Safe Workplace Principles that had been agreed by National Cabinet on April 24,” Mr Morrison said.

“National Cabinet agreed that Safework Australia would be the single source of information, which will allow businesses to plan with confidence and consistency. A toolkit is being developed for businesses to use, to help them be work ready in a COVID-19 safe environment.

“National Cabinet encouraged businesses to be prepared for reopening, to protect their workers and protect their business.”

“National Cabinet agreed to establish a three step framework to gradually remove baseline restrictions to enable Australians to live in a COVID-19 safe economy,” the Prime Minister added.

“Details will be determined by National Cabinet on Friday, May 8.

“Individual states and territories will determine the timeframe for graduating between steps and individual restrictions to remove. This reflects the fact that states and territories are at different stages of the pandemic response, with six of eight states and territories now recording multiple zero case days.

“National Cabinet noted that the Northern Territory has announced that by June 5, it will be able to remove many restrictions, while maintaining social distancing, hygiene and travel restrictions.

“It is National Cabinet’s aim to have a sustainable COVID-19 safe economy in July 2020. This will be subject to strong epidemiology results, testing, tracing and local surge health response capacity. National Cabinet noted that some health measures will need to be in place for a considerable period of time including social distancing, strong hygiene and international travel restrictions. Some jurisdictions may choose to maintain interstate travel restrictions.”

Australia’s chief medical officer Brendan Murphy said that as of today there had been 6849 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Australia.

There are now only about 1000 active cases in Australia, and over the past week daily infection rates have remained low.

The country’s death toll has reached 96, and while Mr Murphy acknowledged Australia’s death rate was much lower than many other countries it was still “a terrible thing” that so many Australian lives had been lost to the virus.

Meanwhile NSW Health announced today that as at 8pm on Monday, May 4, three additional cases of COVID-19 had been diagnosed since 8pm on Sunday, May 3, bringing the state’s total to 3035.

There are currently 102 COVID-19 cases being treated by NSW Health, including 13 people being treated in intensive care units, with 11 of those requiring ventilators. 75 per cent of cases are in non-acute, out-of-hospital care.

There have now been 2349 people who have recovered from COVID-19 in NSW.