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Australian scientists have raised questions over the efficacy of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine in establishing herd immunity, calling for a pause on its widespread rollout as the country recorded one new coronavirus case on Wednesday. The opposition to the vaccine casts a cloud over Australia's immunisation plans with 53 million doses of the AstraZeneca jab already on hand. ‘The question is really whether it is able to provide herd immunity. We are playing a long game here. We don't know how long that will take,’ said Professor Stephen Turner, the president of the Australian and New Zealand Society for Immunology (ASI). Turner added that the government must pivot towards getting more of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines. Experts, including Turner, cited data showing the AstraZeneca jab had 62% efficacy compared with over 90% for the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine. In a statement, the ASI said Turner was speaking as an expert in immunology and that the body did not advocate a pause to the rollout as widely reported by local media. Earlier, Turner told the Sydney Morning Herald the AstraZeneca vaccine is not one ‘I would be deploying widely because of that lower efficacy.’ Australia has 10 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, though neither AstraZeneca nor Pfizer have approval from the country's drug regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA). AstraZeneca did not immediately respond to an email request for comment. EFFECTIVE, SAFE, HIGH QUALITY Australia's chief medical officer, Paul Kelly, attempted to thwart the concerns around its efficacy, saying the AstraZeneca jab was ‘effective’, ‘safe’ and of ‘high quality’. ‘The great advantage of the AstraZeneca vaccine is it's being made here in Australia,’ Kelly said. ‘It will be available as soon as the TGA gives its tick, which we expect that it will in February.’ Kelly said Australia will have more data by February as well as ‘real-world information’ coming from London, which has already rolled out the vaccine. Australia has been more successful than many other countries in managing the pandemic, with total infections in the country of 25 million people at about 28,600, with 909 deaths. Its success is largely attributable to closed borders and widespread compliance with social-distancing rules, along with aggressive testing and tracing programmes. Given the low case numbers and community transmission rates, some experts say Australia could afford waiting for a more effective vaccine. ‘The government needs to be flexible in its rollout decisions once we have a better understanding of the efficacy of the other vaccines,’ said Adrian Esterman, chair of Biostatistics and Epidemiology at the University of South Australia. Australia recorded one new local coronavirus cases in its most populous state of New South Wales on Wednesday. In Queensland, hundreds of hotel quarantine guests were forced to restart their isolation after a handful of cases in the facility were linked to the highly contagious UK virus strain.

Australia’s third-largest city headed into lockdown and borders were set to tighten nationwide yesterday, after a cleaner at a quarantine hotel contracted the UK coronavirus strain that appears to be more infectious. More than 2mn residents in the Greater Brisbane area will have to stay at home for at least three days from Friday evening, authorities said.  “If we are going to stop the spread of this infectious strain, this UK strain, we must act immediately,” Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk told media.  Large queues formed at shops around the city, prompting officials to urge people to stop panic-buying. The incoming restrictions will still allow residents to leave home to buy essentials. On Brisbane’s central shopping strip, Queen Street Mall, people voiced broad support for the measures - keen to avoid the soaring case numbers seen as the variant takes hold in Britain. Andy McPhee, 51, a Brisbane resident who works for an international firm, said the lockdown paled in comparison to what his colleagues overseas were experiencing. “I don’t think a three-day lockdown is going to hurt us at all. I think it’s imperative to stamp out the virus,” McPhee told AFP.  “One case becomes two and two cases become 10 so before you know it, it can get a bit out of control.”  The variant, which first triggered warnings in the UK last month, appears to be more infectious than other Covid-19 strains more commonly detected in Australia.  Several UK and South African variant cases have been detected in travellers currently under mandatory quarantine in recent weeks. But the Queensland case was the first to be contracted locally and is believed to have spread to a cleaner from a returning traveller isolating in a Brisbane quarantine hotel.  The city’s lockdown signalled a return of restrictions unseen since March. Residents have been ordered to stay home and told to wear masks when leaving for essential reasons only. Following the announcement, authorities around the country restricted travel to and from Brisbane and tightened already tough rules on international arrivals.  Prime Minister Scott Morrison said all international travellers would now be required to undergo testing before flying to Australia. The already low number of arrivals would also be temporarily reduced by 50% and a 14-day mandatory quarantine for all travellers will be retained. “There are many unknowns and uncertainties in relation to the new strain, and so that’s why this precautionary approach, we believe, is very sensible,” Morrison said.  Researchers are scrambling to determine just how much more contagious the British variant - known as B.1.1.7 - is, with initial studies suggesting it may spread 40-70% more than existing strains, although data outside Britain is limited.  Another key question is whether existing vaccines work against the new strain, with Pfizer reporting that preliminary findings were positive and the vaccines did work.  Before the announcement, Brisbane was among several Australian cities enjoying a return to relative normality during the southern hemisphere’s summer.  The state of Queensland recorded no new cases of community transmission yesterday.  But recent outbreaks in Sydney and Melbourne had forced travel across state borders to be tightly restricted again amid mounting pressure on officials to hasten the vaccine’s rollout.  On Thursday, Morrison announced plans to bring forward the planned vaccine rollouts by weeks. They are now slated to begin in February. Australia has recorded more than 28,500 Covid-19 cases and 909 deaths linked to the virus, in a population of about 25mn.

Travellers to Australia will have to show a negative Covid-19 test before they can get on their plane, the prime minister said on Friday, as the city of Brisbane went into lockdown after the discovery of a case of a virulent new coronavirus variant. The more than 2 million residents of Brisbane, Australia's third-largest city, will be barred from leaving their homes for anything but essential business for three days from Friday evening after a worker at a quarantine hotel tested positive for the new variant, which was first detected in Britain. Australia has found several cases of the variant but this was the first one to appear outside the quarantine system. Australia has also found a variant that emerged in South Africa in hotel quarantine. It was not known if the hotel worker, a cleaner, was infected by someone who arrived from Britain but everyone would now need to show a negative test to travel to Australia, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced. "A negative test is not foolproof, but a positive test - they're not coming," Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly told reporters in the capital, Canberra. Morrison justified the Brisbane lockdown, given the danger that the new variant could quickly become the dominant strain of the virus. "I know they will be some in Brisbane today asking 'why is this necessary? There is only one case'. Well, this isn’t any ordinary case. This is a very special case and one that requires us to treat things quite differently," Morrison told reporters. Australia has had about 28,500 cases of the novel coronavirus and some 900 deaths, far fewer than many other countries, partly because of strict border controls from the outset of the pandemic. Since March, the border has been shut to all non-citizens and permanent residents and the number of people allowed back each week has been capped at just over 6,000 people, with everyone going into mandatory hotel quarantine at their expense. More than 35,000 Australians have registered their intention to return but Morrison said the number allowed back would be reduced by nearly half until mid-February, given the danger of the new variant. "We can't put it back in the box. We've got to act before we get the cases," said the chief health officer of Queensland state, Jeannette Young. Brisbane is the capital of Queensland. Other states moved quickly to isolate Queensland. Western Australia said people from Queensland could not travel there and others implemented mandatory quarantine for arrivals from the state. Brisbane residents out on essential business must wear masks. Funeral and weddings are limited to 20 and 10 people respectively, while entertainment venues will close and restaurants and cafes will only be allowed to serve takeaway. Officials have identified and isolated 79 people who are close contacts of the female hotel worker. Morrison said all workers at quarantine hotels would have daily Covid-19 tests. 

Australia's most populous state New South Wales on Tuesday called on residents in three cities to be tested for Covid-19 and isolate, as concerns grew that a Sydney cluster may have spread to regional areas after a visitor from the city tested positive. Concerns over the extent of the Sydney cluster saw authorities ban residents from several suburbs from attending a Jan. 7 Australia-India cricket test in Sydney, and again called for widespread testing for even the mildest of symptoms. Sydney is battling a number of clusters, the most concerning in its western suburbs which has been linked to a liquor outlet frequented by possibly thousands of people over the Christmas period. New South Wales (NSW) state, the epicentre of Australia's latest outbreak, on Tuesday said it had detected four new local cases of Covid-19 in the past 24 hours, one in a man who travelled from Sydney to the outback town of Broken Hill. "This is a reminder of what can occur for people who are moving out of Sydney. We said clearly in the past, if you have any symptoms, if you are concerned, you should limit your mobility," acting NSW Premier John Barilaro told reporters in Sydney. Barilaro urged people in three regional NSW cities, which the infected man visited, to get a Covid-19 test and isolate while awaiting a test. NSW on Monday reported zero new local infections, the first time the state reported no new infections since Dec 15. NSW has recorded nearly 200 cases in the recent Sydney outbreaks, though infections have largely been confined to just a few suburbs. The state has imposed new social distancing restrictions and mandated the wearing of masks in shopping centres and on public transport or face a A$200 ($154) fine. NSW has been effectively isolated from the rest of Australia after other states and territories closed borders or imposed 14-day mandatory quarantine rules. Australia shut its international borders in March to all non-citizens and permanent residents. Those allowed to enter must enter a 14-day hotel quarantine. Australia has reported just over 28,500 coronavirus cases and 909 deaths.

* NSW COVID cluster grows by 7 cases * Masks compulsory, A$200 fine for non-compliance * Victoria records 10 community transmission cases * Victoria says its virus cluster directly linked to NSW Australia's most populous state of New South Wales on Saturday made masks compulsory and imposed new restrictions as its coronavirus cluster expanded by seven, while neighbouring Victoria recorded 10 new locally acquired Covid-19 cases. NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian banned dancing and singing at night clubs while restricting numbers at gym classes, weddings, funerals and places of worship. However, the five-day Cricket test match between Australia and India, scheduled to begin on Thursday, will go ahead with attendance at 50% capacity. ‘We consider health and safety first and foremost, but we also need to think about well-being and jobs and the economy,’ Berejiklian told reporters in Sydney. ‘And that's why by putting these measures and settings in place we are confident we can continue to increase and encourage economic activity, give confidence to business and jobs, but also, of course, keep the virus at bay.’ NSW, which has close to 200 active Covid-19 cases, will levy a A$200 ($154) fine for not wearing a mask with the rule being enforced from Monday. Victoria, which now has 29 active cases, this week made masks mandatory across the state while limiting gatherings and shutting its border to NSW, prompting lengthy delays at border checkpoints on New Year's Day. Authorities on Saturday said genomic sequencing showed the Victoria outbreak was directly linked to the NSW cluster, vindicating the decision to shut borders. ‘As a result of the learnings that we have gone through, we’ve taken the view that the responses we have put in place are proportionate and fair. Victorians have a lot at stake here,’ Victorian health minister Martin Foley said. South Australia state recorded another day of zero cases while Tasmania, which is COVID free, banned visitors from parts of Victoria. Queenslanders were urged to reassess travel plans to NSW and Victoria. Australia has reported more than 28,450 Covid-19 cases and 909 deaths since the pandemic began.

Australia amended its national anthem to remove reference to the country being ‘young and free’ amid calls to recognise that its Indigenous people are the oldest continued civilisation in the world. The change to ‘for we are one and free’ took effect on Friday. ‘We live in a timeless land of ancient First Nations peoples, and we draw together the stories of more than 300 national ancestries and language groups,’ Prime Minister Scott Morrison told reporters in Canberra. ‘And our anthem should reflect that. The changes we have made and we have announced today, I think, achieve that goal.’ Australia has struggled for decades to reconcile with Aborigines, who arrived on the continent some 50,000 years before British colonists. Each year Australians have a national holiday on Jan. 26, marking the date the ‘First Fleet’ sailed into Sydney Harbour in 1788, carrying mainly convicts and troops from Britain. Some indigenous people refer to Australia Day as ‘Invasion Day’. There is now a renewed focus on Indigenous empowerment amid the Black Lives Matter movement. The idea to change the wording was floated in 2020 by New South Wales premier Gladys Berejiklian who had said the current wording ignored Australia’s ‘proud First Nations culture’. The proposal was welcomed by several lawmakers, including federal minister for Indigenous Australians Ken Wyatt as well as firebrand rightwing One Nation party leader Pauline Hanson. When asked if he would want to be the first person to sing the new national anthem, Morisson said: ‘I think singing by prime ministers is the same as public exercise by prime ministers -- it is best done in private.’

The New Zealand man who murdered British backpacker Grace Millane committed violent sex crimes against at least two other women, a court revealed Tuesday, as police urged any more victims to come forward. The Supreme Court overturned orders banning Jesse Shane Kempson being identified as the predator who strangled Millane in December 2018 after the pair met through the online dating app Tinder. The murder shocked New Zealand, which is usually regarded as a safe place to travel, prompting a tearful apology to Millane's family from Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern after the young traveller's body was found. The suppression orders on reporting Kempson's name remained in place even after his murder conviction in November last year, with the court offering no explanation at the time for the highly unusual move. But a judgement released Tuesday revealed that he was still facing two trials for sexual offences when the Millane verdict came in, and the court feared naming him could prejudice those proceedings. In the first, he was convicted of sexual violation, assault and threatening to kill his former partner, reportedly brandishing a knife to her throat. The second resulted in a rape conviction involving another woman that Kempson met on Tinder. He was sentenced to a total of 11 years for the sex crimes, to be served concurrently alongside the sentence of life with a 17-year non-parole period for Millane's murder. Detective inspector Scott Beard said the "callous, narcissistic" serial sex offender may have more victims. "There could well be other women out there who Grace's killer may have offended against," he told TVNZ. "If they're not sure what to do, come to the police and speak to us." Kempson's appeal against the Millane murder verdict was rejected last week and the court found there was no longer any need to stop the 28-year-old being named. Millane disappeared on the eve of her 22nd birthday, within days of arriving in Auckland while on a year-long, round-the-world trip after graduating from university. She met her killer for the first time on the evening of her death after matching with him on Tinder and the pair went back to his city-centre apartment after visiting several bars. Kempson's lawyers claimed at his trial that she accidentally choked during a sex game gone wrong, a defence rejected by the jury, which unanimously found him guilty. The case prompted British lawmakers in July to ban the so-called "rough sex defence" in sexual violence cases, with women's advocates pushing for similar reforms in New Zealand.

Australia confirmed yesterday it has detected two cases of a fast-spreading new coronavirus strain that has forced Britain to reverse plans to ease curbs over Christmas, the first confirmed cases of the strain in the Asia-Pacific region. Australia’s most populous state on Sunday reported six new cases of the novel coronavirus in people returning from overseas and in quarantine, and authorities said among them were two cases of the fast-spreading new strain. However, New South Wales officials stressed that no people infected with the new strain were believed to be circulating in the community. “We’ve had a couple of UK returned travellers with the particular mutations,” NSW chief health officer Kerry Chant told reporters. Australia, which has since March closed its borders to all non-citizens and permanent residents, said it was not considering suspending flights with Britain. “Everyone coming from the UK is going into 14 days of hotel quarantine and they are of no risk as that quarantine works so successfully,” Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly told reporters. Authorities were also hopeful they were getting to grips with a flare-up of the virus in Sydney after New South Wales reported its lowest one-day rise in new infections in three days. The state said 15 people had tested positive for the virus in the past 24 hours, down from the 30 the previous day, bringing the total number of cases in a new outbreak centred on Sydney’s northern beaches to 83. “I’m pleased with what we’ve seen overnight, but again, it’s volatile,” NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian told reporters. The government would provide an update by Wednesday on “what Christmas and the next few days look like” in terms of containment measures, she said. Other states and territories have moved quickly to close borders to all of Sydney’s 5mn residents, throwing Christmas travel plans into disarray. “2020 is not done with us yet,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison told reporters. NSW imposed a lockdown on Friday in Sydney’s northern beaches area, home to more than 250,000 people, after the cluster emerged, centred on two dining and entertainment venues in the seaside suburb of Avalon. About 90 locations including cafes, gyms, casinos and supermarkets across Sydney were identified as having been visited by infected people. Authorities have urged anyone who visited the venues to immediately get tested and self-isolate, while dozens of domestic flights due to leave Sydney were cancelled. With travel in chaos, states and territories warned their residents to leave NSW and return quickly if they wanted to avoid mandatory quarantine. Concrete barriers will appear on the border between NSW and Queensland state, with police and military personnel deployed to enforce the rules, the Queensland state government said.

* New UK strain is up to 70% more infectious * UK strain detected in 2 travellers to Australia * Japan, India, S.Korea monitoring situation * Thailand ramps up testing, Sydney cancels some domestic flights  Australia said on Monday it had detected cases of the new virulent coronavirus strain identified in the United Kingdom, while Hong Kong said it would suspend Britain flights. Two travellers from the United Kingdom to Australia's New South Wales state were found carrying the mutated variant of the virus that Britain has said could be up to 70% more infectious. Both are in quarantine, and the recent spike in infections in Sydney are not linked to this, authorities said. The new strain has prompted Britain's European neighbours and several others including Canada and Iran to close their doors to travellers from the country. Much is unknown about the strain, but experts said current vaccines should still be effective against it. Asian nations including Japan and South Korea said they were monitoring the new strain even as they battle a spike in infections at home. Hong Kong became the first city in the region to ban flights from Britain in a bid to curb already rising case numbers in the dense financial hub. The Chinese special administrative region said on Monday that people arriving from Britain before Dec. 22 would have to quarantine for three weeks instead of two. South Korea, which imposes a 14-day quarantine on everyone entering the country, said it was reviewing new measures for flights from Britain, and would test twice those coming in from there before they were released from quarantine. New cases climbed to over 1,000 a day in South Korea several times last week. It reported on Sunday an outbreak in a Seoul prison where 188 inmates and staff were infected. The country said on Monday Seoul will ban gatherings of more than four people later this week and double hospital beds for critical COVID-19 cases by year end. Taiwan, which also has a 14-day quarantine, said on Sunday there were no plans at present to stop flights from Britain. An Indian government committee tasked with monitoring the pandemic met on Monday to discuss the new strain, but did not offer clarity on whether flights to Britain would be halted. Britain is one of 23 countries that India shares an "air bubble" with. India's health minister said the country was prepared to deal with the new strain and that there was no need to panic. Japan, where entry from Britain is already banned in principle, said it would keep in close touch with other countries as well as the World Health Organization to see how the new type of virus was spreading. The new strain in Britain comes as cases have surged recently in several Asian countries that successfully contained the pandemic earlier. The spikes have prompted localised lockdowns in some countries and more aggressive testing. Thailand said on Sunday it was testing tens of thousands of people, and extended curbs on movement, following its worst outbreak yet that began at a shrimp market in a province that is a centre of the seafood industry and home to thousands of migrant workers. Thailand, the first country outside China to report COVID-19 cases, has so far reported just 60 deaths from the virus among its 70 million population. On Monday, the country confirmed 382 new infections, mostly migrant workers. Thousands of workers in South East Asian countries such as Singapore and Malaysia have been infected in dormitories and factories, revealing often unsanitary living and working conditions even as overall numbers in these places have largely been contained. Australia, where cases in Sydney have flared in recent days, on Monday cancelled dozens of domestic flights. New South Wales, which reported 86 new local cases since Thursday, ordered more than a 250,000 people in Sydney's northern beaches area into a lockdown, and urged people who had visited venues where confirmed cases were found to get tested and self-isolate. These cases are not part of the UK strain. Australian health authorities said a virus strain in northeastern Sydney matched a traveller from the United States, but how it got from the airport to the community was puzzling. 

* All Australian states, territories restrict Sydney travel * Sydney cluster grows to 70, fears infections will spread * Tougher social distancing restrictions in Sydney * Christmas holiday chaos Sydney was isolated from the rest of Australia on Sunday after all of the country's states and territories imposed travel restrictions on its residents as a coronavirus cluster in the city grew to around 70. The Australian Capital Territory (ACT) sent a stern 'do not come to us' message to Sydney, the country's most populous city of more than five million people, warning its residents they would be quarantined for 14 days if they arrived.. "If you are not an ACT resident and have been in greater Sydney...our message is simple: do not travel to the ACT," the ACT health department said. The states of Victoria and Queensland, and the Northern Territory, banned people arriving from Sydney as of Monday. Queensland police will reintroduce road checkpoints at the New South Wales (NSW) state border to help enforce the new declaration of greater Sydney as a Covid-19 hotspot. South Australia state imposed a 14-day quarantine for Sydney arrivals on Sunday and banned travellers from affected suburbs. The island state of Tasmania took similar steps on Saturday. Western Australia state imposed a hard border closure. Travellers from elsewhere in NSW, where Sydney is the state capital, will require documents showing they are not coming from the affected Sydney suburbs if they wish to cross state borders. About a quarter of a million people in Sydney's northern beach suburbs where the outbreak has occurred have been put into a strict lockdown until Christmas Eve. "If we can lockdown here and get rid of it, fantastic and everyone else can be free," Rachel Buxcon, a retired northern beaches resident said. "But if it extends, then we’re all in it together." On Sunday, NSW state Premier Gladys Berejiklian said public gathering across the rest of Sydney will be limited, with household gatherings capped at 10 participants and hospitality venues at 300, among other restrictions. "We must take this action now to ensure we keep on top of this outbreak," said Berejiklian. She also urged people in the greater Sydney area to wear masks in public, although it was not mandatory. "If you're going grocery shopping anywhere in NSW, please wear a mask, if you're going to a place of worship in NSW, please wear a mask ... and for goodness sake, do not get on public transport unless you're wearing a mask," she said. Until this week, Australia had gone more than two weeks without any local transmission and had lifted most restrictions ahead of Christmas. The Sydney outbreak and border restrictions have thrown Christmas holiday travel plans into chaos. The annual Sydney-to-Hobart yacht race starting Boxing Day Dec. 26 has been cancelled for the first time in its 76 year history as crews and their families would have to quarantine on arrival in Tasmania. Hotels and holiday rentals in NSW have been swamped with mass Christmas cancellations and restaurants have seen the number of patrons drop significantly, local media reported. "An important reminder as we come into the Christmas holiday season is that the virus has not gone anywhere and we must remain careful," Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison said in a video message. Australia has avoided the worst of the pandemic due to border closures, lockdowns, widespread testing and social distancing. It has recorded around 28,100 infections, the overwhelming majority in Victoria state, and 908 deaths. NSW health authorities said that there were more than 28,200 tests conducted in the past 24 hours and urged more people to get tested. The origin of the virus in Sydney remains unknown, which genome testing suggests is a US strain.

* Sydney's northern beach suburbs in lockdown * Authorities fear cluster may spread across city * Further city restrictions possible * Panic shopping, hotels, restaurants close A quarter million people in Sydney's northern beach suburbs were ordered on Saturday into a strict lockdown until Christmas Eve to help contain a coronavirus cluster with authorities fearing it may spread across Australia's most populous city. New South Wales (NSW) state government is to announce on Sunday whether further restrictions will be imposed on the rest of Sydney, home to around five million people. ‘I want to make that clear, to say to greater Sydney, please, please, do not go out tonight or the next few days unless you really have to,’ NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said at a news conference. The outbreak now totals 39 with two additional cases still under investigation. This up from five only two days ago, but authorities do not know the origin of the virus, which genome testing suggests is a US strain. Australia has avoided the worst of the pandemic due to border closures, lockdowns, widespread testing and social distancing. It has recorded a total of around 28,100 infections. Until this week, the country had gone more than two weeks without any local transmission and had lifted most restrictions ahead of Christmas. The Sydney outbreak prompted states and territories to reimpose border restrictions, sending holiday travel plans for thousands into chaos. Some states such as Victoria and Western Australia, which have previously had hard border closures, have said they may take stronger action if the Sydney cluster spreads rapidly. The Sydney lockdown will mean people in the designated area will only be allowed to leave home for one of four essential reasons: grocery shopping, work, compassionate grounds including emergency medical treatment, or visiting an isolated relative. Local media on Saturday reported panic buying in some supermarkets in the area, leaving shelves empty. By nightfall beachside streets, usually thronging with people a week before Christmas, were eeriely deserted. Many restaurants, cafes and 14 hotels in the area voluntarily closed this weekend. Major public facilities in the area, such as swimming pools, beaches and playgrounds, have been closed and visitors banned from age care facilities. Authorities have pinpointed two clubs at Avalon beach as the original transmission sites for the cluster but have issued more than 30 potential secondary transmission sites, as far away as Bondi and Cronulla beaches in the east and south of the city. After more than 12,000 tests were conducted on Friday, people queued in Sydney for hours on Saturday to get tested and people rushed to stores to stock up on foodstuff. ‘That is the community responding in the way we want them to respond,’ Australia's Deputy Chief Medical Paul Kelly said.

* Australia cancels contract for 51m vaccine doses * Vaccine led to false positive HIV tests in trials * Canberra to buy more of Oxford, Novavax vaccines Australia cancelled the production of a locally made vaccine against Covid-19 after trials showed it could interfere with HIV diagnosis, with the government instead securing additional doses of rival vaccines. Antibodies generated by the vaccine being developed by the University of Queensland (UQ) and biotech firm CSL, one of four candidates contracted by the Australian government, were found to lead to some false positive HIV test results, the makers said. While the vaccine had elicited a ‘robust’ immune response to the novel SARS-COV-2 virus without serious adverse effects in a Phase 1 trial with 216 participants, re-engineering a fix could take another 12 months, they said. CSL and the Australian government had together decided to stop Phase 2 and Phase 3 trials. ‘While this is a tough decision to take, the urgent need for a vaccine has to be everyone's priority,’ said UQ professor Paul Young. CSL, which had a contract to produce 51 million doses of the UQ vaccine, will instead produce an extra 20 million doses of the Oxford vaccine being developed with Britain's AstraZeneca , taking the total to 53 million. The government said it has also secured additional doses of Novavax vaccines. Australia also has a contract for 10 million doses of a vaccine being developed by Pfizer, with regulatory approval expected by January 2021. JPMorgan analysts said the cancellation of the CSL contract removed an ‘important’ opportunity for the vaccine maker that would have brought it A$100 million ($75 million) in extra revenues. CSL shares fell 3.2% on Friday, underperforming a slightly weaker broader market. VACCINE ROLL-OUT All up, Australia has secured 140 million vaccine units to inoculate its 25 million people, one of the highest ratios of vaccine purchases to population in the world, officials said. The cancellation was announced before Prime Minister Scott Morrison's final meeting this year with state and territory leaders in Canberra - their first in-person meeting in nine months - to plan the vaccination roll-out and to develop seasonal visas for skilled workers and students. ‘We want to ensure that Australians ... have full confidence, absolute full confidence that when it gets the tick, they can get the jab, and they can make that decision for themselves and for their families, confidently,’ Morrison told reporters. Despite suffering significant economic hits due to Covid-19, Australian consumer sentiment is climbing again as the country re-emerges from the pandemic faster than most. Australia's tally of 28,000 Covid-19 infections is far fewer than in many other developed countries, and with only sporadic cases of the virus now showing up, it has not raced to start vaccinations as in North America and parts of Europe. The country is scheduled to start vaccinations in March 2021 and expects to inoculate its whole population by the end of the year.

Australian police arrested on Wednesday an 18-year man who had allegedly expressed interest in committing a mass causality attack, motivated by right-wing ideology. Police said they expect to lay charges on Wednesday against the unidentified man from Albury, a small town 553 km southwest of Sydney. "The male we've arrested has an extremely right-wing ideology and is focused on neo-Nazi, white supremacist and anti-Semitic material," Australian Federal Police Assistant Commission Scott Lee told reporters in Sydney. "A couple of days ago what we observed was an escalation in the tone which went to a support of a mass casualty event, and potentially his involvement in that event." Australia, a staunch US ally, has been on heightened alert against the threat of home-grown radicals after several "lone wolf” attacks in recent years. A white supremacist gunman from Australia killed 51 Muslim worshippers in New Zealand last year. Australian intelligence agencies have regularly warned of an increased threat by right-wing aligned individuals since then. 

Residents of a coastal township on Australia’s World Heritage-listed Fraser Island were told to evacuate yesterday as a bushfire approached. Since it was sparked by an illegal campfire seven weeks ago, the blaze has blackened half the island off Australia’s north eastern coast, which is part of the Great Barrier Reef and famed for its tropical rainforest on sand dunes, and inland lakes. Residents of Happy Valley had a small reprieve after the blaze lessened in intensity yesterday afternoon, Queensland state emergency services commissioner Greg Leach told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. “We now don’t anticipate that that fire will run into the Happy Valley settlement today but we’ll continue to work hard,” Leach said. “We will continue to have aircraft on the fire from first light tomorrow to try and knock that fire down as best we can.” Officials said that there were more than 90 personnel, 38 vehicles and 17 aircraft working on Fraser Island, including a large air tanker based in the state for the bushfire season and another tanker on the way from New South Wales state. Queensland’s emergency services urged residents to evacuate late yesterday afternoon. “Leaving immediately is the safest option, as it will soon be too dangerous to drive,” the state’s Fire and Emergency Services said on social media. “Any persons in the vicinity of Happy Valley township should leave the area.” Baking temperatures across Queensland last week caused peak bushfire conditions, with emergency services currently attending to 48 fires, Leach said.

Hit miniseries ‘The Queen's Gambit’ has led to a surge of interest in chess, with one popular website registering millions of new players and academies reporting unprecedented demand. Netflix said the show, which follows the turbulent career of a fictional female child prodigy in the 1950s and 1960s, has become its most-watched ever and is currently the number-one ranked programme in 63 countries. Gaming site Chess.com said the series had prompted a wave of interest -- already piqued by the pandemic and top-flight chess players appearing on the Twitch gaming platform -- with new daily registrations up 400 percent. ‘Since the release of 'The Queen's Gambit' we have seen roughly 2.5 million new members join,’ the website's Nick Barton told AFP. ‘Nearly each day of November we've set a new company record for the most members joining.’ Worldwide, Google reported searches for ‘chess’ are at their highest level in 14 years. It is just the latest burst of popularity for a game that is believed to have originated in India in the seventh century and was played -- and occasionally banned -- by medieval European kings, before becoming more established in the late 1800s. In modern times, chess had a resurgence during the Cold War. That period forms the backdrop for ‘The Queen's Gambit’, and the story of a youthful American taking on a wily Soviet grandmaster is inspiring another generation of players. ‘There has been a massive surge in adults interested,’ according to chess master and Sydney Academy of Chess director Brett Tindall, who called it ‘unprecedented’. Tindall told AFP he has fielded calls from 40-50 adults looking for lessons in the last few weeks, and when carrying academy-branded kit he reports being stopped in the street and asked his opinion about the series. - More women playing - On school visits, normally ambivalent teachers have gone out of their way to approach him, and some students are tuning in too -- even though the series features heavy alcohol and drug abuse. ‘I was at a school this morning, and few kids were talking about it, and I was like: 'guys, I don't think you're really meant to be watching this show',’ he said. Chess.com's Barton said the show's focus on female lead Beth Harmon -- played by Anya Taylor-Joy -- had prompted more women to register than usual. They were now also spending more time on the site than men. ‘These shows really help to increase the curiosity value and newcomers are attracted to the game,’ Vijay Deshpande, secretary of the All India Chess Federation, told AFP. ‘We have a lot of good chess players in the country and the number has grown during the lockdown. Young people are hooked to technology and they were attracted to online chess.’ Grandmaster and former US champion Jennifer Shahade has said she ‘loved’ the show and had been inundated with people asking her for lessons or tips. ‘I'm honestly just blown away by all the positive attention chess is getting right now. People get us in a way they haven't before,’ she said on a recent podcast. ‘Chess is something people need right now -- the introspection, the delightful escape into a smaller world of 64 squares,’ she said. According to Tindall, the interest goes beyond just the game. The series' opulent settings, Cold War kitsch and period chess equipment seem to have captured people's imagination. ‘We sell lots of different types of (chess) clocks. I have a lot of older style clocks and recently people want to get the clocks from the show... I'm not joking,’ said Tindall. ‘A while ago, we were just trying to clear them out. They aren't really used in competitions any more. We use digital ones.’ Most chess commentators have given the show high marks for authenticity -- perhaps unsurprising, given Russian grandmaster Garry Kasparov and US chess author Bruce Pandolfini were consultants. ‘It's the best thing I've seen about chess,’ said French grandmaster Anthony Wirig during an online event about the show. The ‘Queen's Gambit’ of the title refers to a popular opening that offers a white pawn as a barbed lure to black, which can accept or decline. Australian grandmaster Ian Rogers said the lead character Beth Harmon resembles US prodigy Bobby Fischer, who also faced a formidable Soviet opponent. Fischer's politically tinged matches against the USSR's Boris Spassky were watched on television by millions. ‘However Harmon's struggles with pills and alcohol are all her own,’ Rogers told the Sydney Morning Herald. ‘Nowadays Harmon would be banned by WADA's drug testers long before she reached the top.’

Australia's two biggest states reunited in emotional scenes on Monday as the border - shut for only the second time in 101 years due to the coronavirus pandemic - reopened and the first flights since July landed in Sydney from Melbourne. Friends, family and a musical duo in drag welcomed passengers as they disembarked Qantas flight QF401 at 7:20am (2020 GMT Sunday), the first of 26 flights scheduled between the two states on Monday. "I can come and visit my father when I need to without having to worry about when I can get home," one passenger said as she disembarked. The border between New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria states closed in July due to an outbreak of Covid-19 around Melbourne - Australia's second-largest city. It was the first such border closure since 1919 when Australia was battling the Spanish flu. The outbreak in Victoria, which totalled more than 20,000 cases, was only contained after a stringent lockdown lasting more than 100 days. But with Victoria going more than three weeks without detecting any Covid-19 infections, authorities made the decision to reopen the border much to the relief of separated families and the tourism and aviation sectors. "We never want to be a position again when we have to shut down our borders,” NSW state Premier Gladys Berejiklian told reporters. The Sydney-to-Melbourne is the world's second-busiest air route and Australian lawmakers are keen to revive domestic travel and tourism in a bid to revive the ailing economy. Australia also hopes to restart international travel with flights to New Zealand in the works. While New Zealand citizens can now travel to Victoria without quarantining, a reciprocal agreement is still some way off. New Zealand says Australians will remain barred until the entire country has gone at least 28 days without a single Covid-19 case. Australia’s economy shrank 7% in the three months that ended in June, the most since records began in 1959, while the unemployment rate hit a 22-year high of 7.5% in July. As well as reopening the border, NSW also said up to 500 people can now gather at outdoor religious gatherings. Victoria accounts for about 73% of Australia's total Covid-19 cases of just over 27,800 and 90% of its 907 deaths. 

A man has died after being bitten by a shark at a beach popular with tourists on Australia's northwest coast, authorities said Sunday. Police were called to a Cable Beach in the morning after reports of the attack. The man was pulled from the water and given medical treatment but later succumbed to his injuries. "Police can confirm that tragically the man has died," Western Australia police said in a statement. Shark attacks are rare on Cable Beach, a 22-kilometre stretch of pristine white sand next to the town of Broome. But authorities are generally forced to close the beach once or twice a year when deadly saltwater crocodiles are spotted nearby. The man's death marks the eighth fatal shark attack in Australian waters this year. There have been at least 22 shark maulings in the same period, according to the Taronga Conservation Society Australia government agency.

The Australian state of South Australia reported 14 new coronavirus cases on Monday, a dramatic increase from the previous day, prompting the country's other states to tighten internal borders and amid concerns of a new virus hot spot. South Australia ended a months-long streak of no Covid-19 infections on Sunday, reporting three locally-acquired coronavirus cases after a worker from a quarantine hotel infected family members, the authorities said. By Monday the number in the state had jumped to 17, prompting several other states to impose new border restrictions amid fears that an outbreak in the state that has so far avoided the brunt of the pandemic could spread further afield. ‘We just kept getting positives coming off the machine,’ South Australia Chief Public Health Officer Nicola Spurrier told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. ‘We haven't got the genomics yet, but I'm absolutely certain it has come from a medi-hotel,’ she added, using the term for quarantine hotels. Since neighbouring Victoria state came out of a lengthy lockdown earlier this month to contain its own virus outbreak, Australia has recorded several days of no new coronavirus infections. Australia has only recorded near 28,000 coronavirus infections and just over 900 deaths due to strict measures such as international and state border closures, lockdowns, mandatory social distancing and widespread testing and tracing. Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the new South Australian infections were ‘a reminder, even after a lockdown, even after all this time, the virus hasn't gone anywhere’. Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt said he was offering a national contact-tracing system and defence force personnel to help South Australia stop the virus from spreading, and ‘if more is required, more will be provided’. Western Australia, which also borders South Australia, ordered new arrivals from the state to undertake mandatory tests and self-isolate for 14 days, the island state of Tasmania ordered immmediate self-isolation for people who had arrived from South Australia in the past week and the Northern Territory ordered people arriving from the state to enter supervised quarantine. The premier of Queensland state tweeted that ‘anyone about to leave Adelaide should be advised we are assessing the Covid-19 outbreak and may place restrictions on travel, including mandatory quarantine on arrivals’. The states of New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria, home to more than half the Australian population, meanwhile did not announce changes to internal border controls. ‘I don't think it is a sensible approach, moving forward, to shut your borders every time there is an outbreak,’ NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian told reporters. ‘A number like that, whilst very concerning for a state the size of South Australia, because of the circumstance of this particular case, our health authorities don't believe we need to change any of our policy settings.’ Australia meanwhile said it would spend A$1 billion ($726.3 million) underwriting construction of a vaccine manufacturing plant under a deal with a unit of biomedical giant CSL Ltd , guaranteeing supply of flu shots and antivenins.

Australia will not allow foreign students to return as Canberra prioritises the return of locals stuck overseas, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Friday. Australia has since March closed its borders to all non-citizens and permanent residents in a bid to slow the spread of Covid-19. With foreign students worth about A$35 billion ($25.3 billion) a year to the Australian economy, Canberra had hoped to slowly allow overseas students to return in 2021. Trials began earlier this year. But with thousands of Australians wanting to return, Morrison said there is not enough quarantine facilities. ‘There is a queue, and Australians are in the front of the queue,’ Morrison told reporters in Canberra. Australia caps the numbers of locals allowed to return home each week in order to minimise the risk of spreading Covid-19. Once locals arrive, they enter hotel quarantine for two weeks. Australia on Friday was on course to record a sixth straight day without any locally acquired infections. Australia has recorded about 27,700 Covid-19 infections and 907 deaths, far fewer than many other developed nations. The continued ban on foreign students deepens a financial black-hole facing Australian education providers, estimated to be worth between A$3.1 billion and A$4.8 billion this year alone, Catriona Jackson, Chief Executive of Universities Australia, told Reuters earlier this year. Educational think-tank the Mitchell Institute earlier this week estimated there would be 300,000 fewer international students, half the pre-coronavirus numbers, in Australia by June 2021 if border restrictions remained. Australia's most populous city, Sydney is expected to see a decline of more than 70,000 students, Mitchell Institute said. Several leading universities have announced sweeping job cuts in a bid to reduce costs. In October, Morrison's government said it will spend A$1 billion to support university research amid the fall in overseas students.

Small, portable laser pointers could be used to guide lightning strikes, with a study suggesting the technology may prevent bolts from sparking wildfires, a researcher told AFP Thursday. A team of international scientists have shown storm clouds could be ‘short-circuited’ by using a hollow laser -- like a pipe of light -- to deliver particles into the clouds and draw lightning strikes, research co-author Professor Andrey Miroshnichenko from the University of New South Wales in Canberra told AFP. In lab tests, the team -- which also included scientists from the Australian National University (ANU) -- successfully used a laser tractor beam to direct the path of an electrical discharge to specific targets, Miroshnichenko said. In the past, high-powered lasers were needed to achieve similar results, making the technique dangerous, costly and inaccurate. But the new research suggested that small, hand-held lasers could be used in the field within the next decade, he said. ‘It turns out that to deliver particles, you do not need high-intensity lasers, even low intensity like your laser pointer will be already enough,’ Miroshnichenko said. Using a tractor beam with a hollow centre, micro-particles in the air could be heated up and delivered to a specific point and trigger an electrical discharge. Although it is yet to be tested outside a lab, the technique could potentially be used to control dry lightning strikes, infamous for sparking large blazes including several major bushfires in Australia and the western US in the past year, Miroshnichenko added. ‘We can imagine a future where this technology may induce electrical discharge from passing lightning, helping to guide it to safe targets and reduce the risk of catastrophic fires,’ co-researcher Vladlen Shvedov, from the ANU Research School of Physics, said. The research, published in Nature Communications last month, also involved Texas A&M University in Qatar and the University of California in Los Angeles.