Another good step towards freer movement of people, to help assist states that are very worried about their ability to manage once borders are reopened (WA, QLD, TAS, SA, NT mostly will benefit as NSW/ACT and VIC already have in place)
And about time National Cabinet started thinking nationally. Slowly getting there. Less of the premiers squawking about themselves today.
Good to see some actual real steps towards working together and opening up occurring though.
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NSW tracing approach agreed to be used nationwide
A nationally consistent approach to contact tracing based on the success of NSW will be rolled out across Australia to prevent future COVID-19 outbreaks from spiralling out of control.
Airlines will also be subject to a new mandatory data collection regime, to plug holes in contact tracing by ensuring health authorities can quickly track down passengers on domestic flights between states and territories.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced after Friday's national cabinet meeting that the lessons learned during Victorian health authorities' meeting with their NSW counterparts last week would be "spread across all the other states and territories."
"It was also agreed today that the Commonwealth would lead an initiative to connect all the digital systems that the states and territories are using, so they can interact with each other," Mr Morrison told reporters in Sydney.
"We will develop a digital overlay across all those systems, which will mean that if there were to be an outbreak in a particular place, what that means is that we would be able to swarm, harness the tracing capabilities of more states and territories, to plug into the tracing work that is being done in that particular jurisdiction."
Mr Morrison commended Victoria for its decision to upgrade its contact tracing system. "We've seen that working in particular just in these last few days, as they have been dealing with a particular outbreak," he said. "What we've seen is a lifting of the bar with the tracing capacity, and we welcome that in Victoria."
Mr Morrison said all states and territories must be prepared to quickly activate contact tracing in the case of an outbreak.
National cabinet met today to discuss hotel quarantine arrangements for new international arrival caps as well as a definition of a hotspot.
www.theage.com.au