The APY Lands town of Ernabella recorded 101.6mm of rainfall in the period from 9am Monday to 4am on Tuesday.
“Locally intense rainfall which may lead to dangerous and life-threatening flash flooding is also possible in the warning area,” the Bureau of Meteorology said in a statement this morning.
⚠️Severe Weather Warning for Heavy #Rainfall continues for northern parts of #SouthAustralia. Locally Intense Rainfall leading to dangerous flash-flooding is also possible. Check the latest here https://t.co/4SnoGvGz1J pic.twitter.com/hU3jxorD5E
— Bureau of Meteorology, South Australia (@BOM_SA) January 31, 2022
The State Emergency Service has advised people not to drive, ride or walk through flood water, and to stay indoors away from windows while conditions are severe.
It comes as relief food supplies are being flown to Coober Pedy after heavy rains cut road and rail links to the region.
Two RAAF flights are scheduled out of Adelaide today carrying groceries and other essentials.
More could be sent depending on the prevailing conditions and the needs of locals.
Brigadier Graham Goodwin said the force was ready to help out in any way it could.
“Our principal duty here is to assist the local community of Coober Pedy and the outlying areas, giving them surety and certainty of their food supplies,” he said.
“The people are not going to be left without what they require. We are there to help people at a time of crisis.
“Let me assure the people of Coober Pedy, there will be food coming, there will be supplies coming.”
Food supplies being delivered into Coober Pedy yesterday. Photo: Jarrod Mulvihill/Department of Defence
With train tracks washed away and roads underwater, including the Stuart Highway, the inland drenching has also disrupted food and other supplies to both the Northern Territory and Western Australia.
Premier Steven Marshall said yesterday that more rain would put extreme pressure on an already “tenuous” situation as he also called on people to cancel any unnecessary travel to the state’s north.
“It is a perilous situation at the moment. This additional rain is creating havoc,” he said.
“I think we’ve still got a couple of worrying days ahead of us.
“There is a double-edged sword because for some communities this is very welcome rain. But it is causing major problems with infrastructure and it’s cutting off communities. This is of great concern.”
Current estimates suggest regular rail freight routes will remain closed for at least another 12 days and possibly longer.
The Australian Rail Track Corporation said repairs were underway along a section of track more than 300 kilometres long while a small section remained inaccessible.
“Additional contractors are now on-site to assist ARTC crews and works include building access roads, ensuring supplies can get to damaged locations and supporting restoration works,” a spokesperson said.
“We want to reassure our customers and the community that we will restore these links as quickly as possible.”
A 14-day major emergency was declared in South Australia on Friday, allowing the state’s Police Commissioner Grant Stevens to direct the movement of freight, ensure food security and co-ordinate relief efforts.
SA elective surgery ban to be reviewed
South Australian authorities will today discuss lifting the ban on non-urgent adult elective surgeries, as demand at vaccination clinics eases.
Premier Steven Marshall told reporters yesterday that the state’s COVID Ready committee would today discuss when it could lift the ban, following the resumption of children’s operations over the weekend.
He said vaccination clinics such as the Mile End booster clinic, which is staffed by private hospital nurses, could close in the coming weeks due to insufficient demand, allowing the nurses to resume caring for elective surgery patients.
“At the moment we have a massive excess… supply in the provision of vaccinations over demand, so we’ve just got to get that resourcing right,” Marshall said.
“It’s far better to get those nurses back out into more important settings, for example our elective surgery across South Australia.”
SA Health limited elective surgeries to Category 1 and Urgent Category 2 earlier this month to increase capacity in private and public hospitals following a surge in COVID-19 cases.
But the decision was widely criticised by patients and doctors, who warned hospital operating wards were “sitting idle” while patients waited to undergo major operations.
On Friday, Marshall announced paediatric elective surgeries would resume from Saturday, but most operations wouldn’t be able to be scheduled until this week.
South Australia yesterday recorded 1505 new COVID-19 cases and six deaths.
As of Monday there were 281 people in hospital, including 25 in intensive care and four on ventilators.
Marshall said about 1000 Aboriginal South Australians were COVID-positive, with 29 in hospital and three in intensive care.
“That is above the representation of the Aboriginal community in the overall South Australian population,” he said.
More than a third of SA emergency patients not seen on time
Photo: Tony Lewis/InDaily
Just over 60 per cent of South Australian emergency department patients were seen within clinically acceptable timeframes last financial year, a new report reveals.
According to latest Productivity Commission Report on Government Services data, 61 per cent of patients were treated at public hospital emergency departments on time last financial year, down from 65 per cent the year before.
The national average last financial year was 71 per cent.
The data shows Adelaide also has the worst ambulance response time of any capital city, with 90 per cent of callouts reached in 34.4 minutes last financial year, compared to 20.6 minutes the year before.
However, the majority – 96 per cent – of ambulance patients said they were either “very satisfied” or “satisfied” with the service.
South Australia also had the second best triple-zero call response time in the country, with 85.4 per cent of calls answered within 10 minutes.
It comes after the Ambulance Employees Association yesterday told a parliamentary inquiry that the state’s ambulance service was overstretched and in need of more funding.
The Government appointed an additional 74 full-time-equivalent ambulance officers in last year’s state budget.
Aged care workers to get bonus payments
Photo: AAP/Alan Porritt
The federal government is preparing to roll out bonus payments to workers across residential aged care homes struggling with the ongoing wave of COVID-19 infections.
Workers will be eligible for payments of up to $400 each, paid pro rata based on hours worked, this month. The second payment will follow in May.
Staff providing care, food and cleaning services in government-subsidised facilities will be eligible as well as those in the federal home care scheme.
More than 400 virus deaths this year have been in aged care facilities, amounting to about a third of more than 1160 overall fatalities.
Labor’s health spokesman Mark Butler accused the Morrison government of failing older Australians as aged care facilities struggled to obtain rapid antigen tests and personal protective equipment.
The bonus comes as protesters prepare for a second day of action in Canberra following a march on Parliament House on Monday.
The protesters sought a meeting with political leaders, but appeared unaware parliament is not sitting this week.
The minister responsible for aged care, Richard Colbeck, will on Wednesday front a Senate committee focusing on the COVID-19 pandemic.
He has come under intense fire for skipping an earlier hearing on January 14 and going to the cricket.
Australia’s vaccine rollout coordinator Lieutenant General John Frewen and Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly are also due to appear alongside representatives from the Therapeutic Goods Administration and Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation.
Omicron subvariant BA.2 ‘more infectious’
A Danish study has found the BA.2 subvariant of the Omicron coronavirus variant is more able to infect vaccinated people.
The study, which analysed coronavirus infections in more than 8500 Danish households between December and January, found that people infected with the BA.2 subvariant were roughly 33 per cent more likely to infect others, compared to those infected with BA.1.
Worldwide, the “original” BA.1 subvariant accounts for more than 98 per cent of Omicron cases but its close cousin BA.2 has quickly become the dominant strain in Denmark, dethroning BA.1 in the seconxjmtzywd week of January.
“We conclude that Omicron BA.2 is inherently substantially more transmissible than BA.1, and that it also possesses immune-evasive properties that further reduce the protective effect of vaccination against infection,” the study’s researchers said.
The study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, was conducted by researchers at Statens Serum Institut (SSI), Copenhagen University, Statistics Denmark and Technical University of Denmark.
“If you have been exposed to Omicron BA.2 in your household, you have 39 per cent probability of being infected within seven days. If you instead had been exposed to BA.1, the probability is 29 per cent,” lead study author Frederik Plesner told Reuters.
That suggests BA.2 is about 33 per cent more infectious than BA.1, he added.
BA.2 cases have also been registered in the United States, United Kingdom, Sweden and Norway but to a much lesser extent than in Denmark, where it accounts for roughly 82 per cent of cases.
The study also showed that BA.2 was relatively better than BA.1 at infecting vaccinated and booster-vaccinated people, indicating greater “immune evasive properties” of the subvariant.
A child is vaccinated in Denmark. Photo: EPA/OILAFUR STEINAR RYE GESTSSON
But vaccines still played an important role, the study underlined, since both booster-vaccinated and fully vaccinated individuals were less like to get infected and transmit either subvariants, compared to those not vaccinated.
Preliminary analysis by SSI has shown that there is no difference in the risk of hospitalisation for BA.2 compared to BA.1.
The study also confirms preliminary analysis from England which showed BA.2 appears to have a substantial growth advantage over the BA.1 type, according to the UK Health Security Agency.
Bali to reopen to foreign travellers
Photo: Made Nagi/EPA
Indonesia’s holiday island of Bali will start welcoming back travellers from all countries from later this week, more than three months after announcing it was open to selected nationalities.
Though Bali officially opened to visitors from China, New Zealand, and Japan among other countries in mid-October, there has since been no direct flights, Tourism Minister Sandiaga Uno told a briefing on Monday.
The reopening follows similar announcements by Thailand and the Philippines, which put quarantine waivers on hold in December over initial uncertainty about vaccine efficacy against the Omicron variant of COVID-19.
The decision comes despite a steady rise in Indonesia’s COVID-19 cases this month, despite having brought outbreaks under control in the second half of last year. Health authorities have attributed the increase to Omicron.
Bali drew 6.2 million foreign visitors in 2019, the year before COVID-19 struck, but tight pandemic border restrictions devastated tourism, which is usually worth 54 per cent of its economy.
Singapore Airlines said on Friday it would resume flights to Bali from Singapore starting on February 16.
Senior minister Luhut Pandjaitan said that from February 4 international visitors who were vaccinated against COVID-19 would still be required to do between five and seven days of quarantine.
