Victorian Chief Health Officer is speaking on the ongoing COVID-19 infections. Says it's due to people not wearing masks and hugging people outside of their household. "Ingrained habits" they're trying to break through the new ads

[NB. These examples are not especially useful]

[The majority of cases are still being reported among healthcare workers and other industries where people are precariously employed, where PPE and training are poor, where they're exposed to risk by institutional context. To use outlier examples of hugs confuses the public.]

Victorian Premier has spoken about people not "giving into" fatigue, flagging this may lead to resurgence of cases.

[The messaging today is very off. Negative reinforcement is often a poor way to achieve behavioural change, especially in public health]

24,968 Victorians have received COVID-19 support, for those who have no sick leave & need to isolate waiting for test results. Was previously $300 but recently increased to $450

Total payment of $8.89 million to date

Journalist questions backlog. Premier will look at numbers

Premier asked about lower rate of infection: he says the fact that 25,000 have applied & are eligible for support payment shows that a big driver was insecure work. People feeling pressured to decide* to go to work because they had no sick leave and were afraid of losing shifts

*[Framing this as a decision is another poor choice. People don't have a choice to go to work when they can't access employment rights, like sick leave. It's not a decision when there is no alternative but to keep going to work.]

Premier confirms aged and healthcare workers remain biggest rate of infections.

[Again, institutional pattern, not simply individuals breaking rules]

Talks about long-form interview data "might provide us some trends" on infections. [Has Gov not analysed these qual data?]

Responding to a question about people "not following the rules." Premier allows himself to dragged into emphasising "deviance" of minority who are NOT primarily driving infections.

Chief Health Officer responds to question about @ama_media's urge to Gov to compel vaccination. https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/no-jab-no-play-the-wrong-approach-to-covid-19-vaccine-doctors-warn-20200821-p55o70.html

"We shouldn't be jumping on commentary for a vaccine that isn't here. At the point where we have a vaccine, that's a very valid question and we'll come it"

Chief Health Officer made a big claim a bit earlier in the press conference: that we won't be seeing rising cases upwards of 300 to 400 daily infections, "Not on my watch"

[Very surprising to hear this promise. BTW. I have much to say about gendered nature of these pressers]

Chief Health Officer is optimistic that in September, we will still be in "double digit" infections. Anticipates being able to do "upstream testing" and other opportunities for daily checks on people in isolation and their contacts*

[*Note, this means military /health visits]

TW suicide: Question to Premier on one case of person who had died by suicide not being found for several days.

[Yikes, I didn't hear the answer, my connection is going dodgy! I'll try to follow this up in subsequent media reporting]