Australia's death toll rises after man and woman confirmed dead
A man in Canberra has died and a woman's death in Victoria has brought Australia's coronavirus death toll to 30.
The man had pre-existing health conditions and was aged in his 80s and died at Canberra Hospital.
“It is my sad duty to report that the ACT has recorded its second death from COVID-19,” Dr Kerryn Coleman said.
“I offer my sincere condolences to this person’s family and friends.
“My thoughts are with you in this very difficult time.”
A woman aged in her 70s died overnight in Victoria after being diagnosed with COVID-19.
This death brings the state’s number of fatalities to eight
“Sadly a woman in her 70s has died in hospital yesterday,” Victoria’s Health Minister, Jenny Mikakos said at a press conference on Saturday.
“My thoughts are with her family and I send my best wishes and deepest sympathy to them at this difficult time.”
The number of confirmed infections in the state has risen by 30 since Friday.
Ms Mikakos confirmed the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the state sit at 1,115.
In Victoria there are currently 42 people in hospital as of Saturday, with 10 patients in intensive care, which is up from seven yesterday.
However, Ms Mikakos did offer some good news and confirmed 527 Victorians have now recovered from COVID-19.
Concern over rise in community transmission cases
Australia’s number of confirmed coronavirus cases surpassed 5000 this week, with Victoria’s count ticking over 1000 on Thursday.
Ms Mikakos said it was “concerning” 73 confirmed cases of the coronavirus have been acquired through community transmission, whereas that number was at just 30 a few days ago.
NSW still has the highest number of COVID-19 deaths in Australia with 12.
It comes as some Victorians continue to ignore coronavirus restrictions with police slapping 25 more people with fines across the state, taking the total of fines to 57.
Officers have conducted more than 12,500 spot checks across the state since March 21 and in the last 24 hours police have conducted 707 spot checks at homes, businesses and services.
People can be fined $1652 if they leave home for non-essential reasons and businesses face a $9913 fine if caught doing the wrong thing.
Ms Mikakos thanked Victorians who were “doing the right thing”, and abiding by the social distancing measures put in place.
“We know that if people do stay home this will save lives, this is what will save our health system,” she told reporters.
Five deaths in 24 hours
Deputy Chief Health Officer Paul Kelly confirmed to reporters there are more than 5500 confirmed cases of coronavirus in Australia as of Saturday afternoon.
“So we have had an increase again over the last 24 hours. The good news about that is that the daily increases are definitely less than they were a week or so ago,” Professor Kelly said.
“But I want to talk about that data.
“Even though that is an improvement in terms of the number of cases that are coming every day, that is still about 250 people that are contracting the virus, and still five people that have died in the last 24 hours.
“These are real people, real examples, and it really talks to way we are being so tough in relation to some of these really quite large changes that have happened in our lives over the past few weeks.”
-With AAP
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