19.9 C
Byron Shire
March 28, 2024

COVID case flies into Ballina airport

Latest News

Carrying and passing the torch

If I say the words ‘US Forces give the nod’, I can pretty much guarantee that you will hear the unmistakable voice of Peter Garrett ringing in your ears. Your head may even start to bob up and down a bit. 

Other News

A seasoned bard

Guy Kachel had an idyllic entry to the world of music. Born in Tamworth, he was raised on the banks of the Peel River. The landscape was a fertile ground for his imagination. Seeing this rustic world change, as Tamworth developed into an inland city and friends grew to sometimes troubled adulthoods, provided insights for the artistry that later powered his career as a performer.

NORPA’s wild ride at Lismore Showgrounds

NORPA is taking audiences on an adventure outside the theatre once again, announcing it will stage its original work Wildskin in a warehouse space at the Lismore Showgrounds. A sensory, destination theatre experience, Wildskin inhabits an outrageous and unpredictable world that’s part bush-thriller, part road-trip and a whole lot of NORPA’s signature theatrical style.

Community grants on offer

Ingrained Foundation is running its fifth annual grants program, with a funding pool of $150,000.

Could the future of the Richmond River be a clean and healthy one?

Imagine a drinkable, swimmable, fishable Richmond River? That is the aim of the Richmond Riverkeepers Association.

Got a creative theatre idea?

Mullumbimby’s The Drill Hall Theatre Company (DHTC) is offering two creative development opportunities for local independent artists to develop new performance piece concepts.

Records galore!

Byron Bay Easter Record Fair returns again to Ewingsdale Hall. Now in its 15th year, the Byron Bay Easter Record Fair is one of the biggest and best in this country. Matt the Vinyl Junkie has spent years on buying trips to the US and Japan scouring dusty warehouses, shops, flea markets and private collections. He can offer an astounding 30,000 records in one place covering most genres.

A new case of COVID-19 has been confirmed in the Northern NSW Local Health District (NNSWLHD). The person arrived on a flight to Ballina from Melbourne on Sunday, 12 July on Jetstar flight JQ466.

‘This brings the total cases to 56, as at 8pm Wednesday, 15 July,’ said Wayne Jones, Chief Executive NNSWLHD.

‘This person was screened on arrival at Ballina airport.

‘Since arriving in Northern NSW, this person has been in mandatory 14-day self-isolation. Any potential close contacts are being followed up.

‘Of the 56 cases in Northern NSW Local Health District, 53 have recovered. There are no cases being treated in hospital.’

Anyone with symptoms, however mild, are asked to self-isolate and get tested.

More than 4,900 people have been tested during the last fortnight in NNSWLHD.

Testing is free and available to everyone in the region, including visitors. The site locations can be found at the COVID-19 clinic information site.

The COVID Clinic at Byron Bay Hospital is open seven days a week from 10am till 4pm.


Support The Echo

Keeping the community together and the community voice loud and clear is what The Echo is about. More than ever we need your help to keep this voice alive and thriving in the community.

Like all businesses we are struggling to keep food on the table of all our local and hard working journalists, artists, sales, delivery and drudges who keep the news coming out to you both in the newspaper and online. If you can spare a few dollars a week – or maybe more – we would appreciate all the support you are able to give to keep the voice of independent, local journalism alive.

17 COMMENTS

  1. People need to be tested before taking off from Melbourne and the results known.
    Where is the thinking?
    You don’t close the gate after the horse has bolted.
    Let us say these people were horses. Would not the horses would be tested and cleared before they got to the airport to be transported somewhere else?

  2. Absolutely, Emily!
    Why are they even allowed to fly from Melbourne to Ballina?
    I’m over the NSW ‘government’ playing Russian Roulette with our lives!

  3. Yes Emily but , it is well proven that some do not incubate the virus for nearly two months ,while some who are infectious have no symptoms at all, so all that 14-day self-isolation and temperature checking is largely just for show. As far as horses go, didn’t they shoot those Hendra cases ?
    Lets just get used to the fact that while ever planes are comming in, so will COVID.
    Cheers, G”)

  4. HOW HEARTENING TO READ ALL OF THE COMMENTS ABOVE. Totally agree that NO flights should have left Melbourne to go anywhere, unless travelling to the moon. IF some simple minded bureaucrat deemed that travel was necessary (go figure) they should have at least been tested In Melbourne first. Doctors & epidemiologists have repeatedly said that 1.5 social distancing is not enough. Nurses have told me sneezes & coughing can spread infection to 8 meters. Many people don’t show symptoms for 6 wks or longer Hello! Then again lets get our priorities right Gladys & Scummo ALL that really matters in a capitalist system is swiping those plastic cards…Cha Ching. Why on EARTH COULDN’T WE FOLLOW NZ’s LEAD which would have avoided ‘containment’ (that’s working …NOT) & so much for suppression. I worry when I hear Govt medical representatives telling us ‘all will be OK…just be patient & abide by the rules’ .Well those rules are inadequate & if people were abiding by the rules or being responsible, we wouldn’t have this serious outbreak in Melbourne or Syd now would we ?? STAY HOME FROM THE PUB & THE DAMN FOOTIE.

  5. The NSW government closed the NSW Border on July 3rd ,so what is a flight direct from Melbourne doing flying in on July 12th.?
    Can anyone tell me?
    Keep the Northen Rivers safe ! Tourism can wait.

  6. Totally agree have heard that two planes from Melbourne landed no checks and several CONFIRMED patients then checked them selves into Byron Hospital !! One would think that all Melb hospitals have no beds available???

  7. Just curious, Ida but is the ‘Dr’ Tim O‘Shea, to whom you refer, the chiropractor and author of ‘The Sanctity of Human Blood, Vaccination and Immunization’? Is Dr John Pombe Magufuli the one whose PhD is in Chemistry and who at least seems to believe the virus exists but believes the best defence against it is prayer?

  8. Dear Liz,
    “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” Aldous Huxley.
    Here is another astutely observant doctor.
    (not on youtube, just for you)
    Read his most recent article about the covids.
    “We Are Victims of the Greatest Crime in History”
    Dr Vernon Coleman MB ChB DSc FRSA
    http://www.vernoncoleman.com/main.htm

  9. Thanks for the suggestion, Ida, but I’m sure if I googled ‘coronavirus hoax’, or similar key words, there would be no end of reading material I could find. But you see I think there is a real danger in people like me, with no medical qualifications, attempting to critically evaluate the ‘evidence’ they employ.

    As a layperson I can’t see why I would give more credibility to a retired GP or a chiropractor than our own local, highly qualified epidemiologists, virologists, immunologists etc from the Doherty Institute founded by Prof Ian Doherty (Nobel Prize for Science), Prof Raina McIntyre etc etc. I do quite a bit of listening to the ABC’s Dr Norman Swan whose full-time job lately seems to be scouring the globe for the latest research but with the ability to synthesise it with the background of a medical degree. So you see I’m not highly motivated to apply my inexpert eye to screeds of material from dubious sources that result from said google search.

    There’s disagreement between these more mainstream sources but they tend to be on issues like suppression versus elimination. There is a general consensus that the thing actually exists and poses quite a threat.

    A common thread I have perceived amongst the naysayers is an anti-vax belief and I can’t quite see an obvious connection apart from perhaps a fear of their position being somewhat undermined by the world holding its breath for a vaccine.

    What I find fascinating though is why you are so determined to believe one narrow source of opinion, (coincidentally All with a common theme) and why you so deeply distrust our universities?

  10. People are being coerced, blackmailed, and guilt-tripped into participating in faulty testing, accepting false diagnoses, and complying with invasive and harmful, if not deadly measures in result, including damaging, unreasonable separation of families, losses of privacy, freedoms, means of livelihood, and other despotic control tactics, such as in some Australian cities of meek, compliant, unarmed communities, police suddenly walking the streets with machine guns !
    What better way to distract our attention from the manipulators of the socio-economic restructuring, than by an invisible alien threat, which requires us to give up all our natural rights, in the war upon ‘it’.
    We had “war on cancer”, “war on drugs”; yet pharmaceutical giants still rule supreme, and we still have cancer. And “war on terror”; Are not militarised police with machine guns prowling friendly Aussie communities, finger next to trigger, an act of terrorism?
    Covid may or may not be what it is purported to be, but the censorship of open scientific debate, and other measures being unleashed are an aggressive pantomime of illogical contradictions in the emerging reality, and amount to a manipulated covert or ‘covid’ war on the people.
    Then there are the issues of incentivisation for preferential covid diagnosis, and the way statistics are arrived at and presented, with emerging evidences opposing the official narrative.
    Also the main drivers of the push to mandated vaccination with some rushed experimental toxic concoction, and associated tracking, are entrepeneurs, lobbyists, self-interested, financially and status motivated people representing biased motivations, as opposed to experts of biology.
    Liz, I sense we are on the same page in our desire to be of service to our fellow people, err on the side of caution, and first do no further harm than is already out there. Thankyou for the healthy discussion.

  11. Thanks Ida, I’m sure we are both well intentioned but on this issue I think we are a very large tome away from being on the same page. And that wouldn’t matter if it was just you and me but this is a sufficiently devastating situation the world finds itself in without movements to actively undermine the medical advice.

    You don’t have to tell me about the hardships the measures against COVID are having – I have dear friends and three generations of my family in Victoria and don’t know when it will be feasible to see any of them again. I’m lucky though – so many people are much more badly affected. But just because we find all this difficult does not mean someone made it up. Just raving on emotionally about how undesirable it all is won’t make it go away. Just because pharmaceutical companies will likely make a motza out of any successful vaccines does it does not mean our mainstream science is not valid. It is an invisible little pathogen dictating the terms, not our scientists, governments, police etc.

    True science looks at the evidence with an open mind, develops hypotheses then tests and retests, examines new data and adapts as new evidence emerges (which will be frequent with a new phenomenon). Anti science settles on a preferred position then goes looking for the evidence that supports it. Just because some things are taken down from social media doesn’t mean that SCIENTIFIC debate is being stifled it may just mean that these platforms are applying some editorial standards to protect the vulnerable from dangerous BS.

    Are you telling me to ‘err on the side of caution’? Because that is exactly what I was appealing for. You don’t seem to want to address my questions:
    Why do you confine your information sources to a minority – largely unqualified – of commentators?
    Are you convinced that they are all totally pure in their motives?
    Do you feel confident enough that these people are right, to potentially endanger human life by encouraging people to work against the collective efforts to limit the spread of this virus?
    Why do you so distrust what’s coming out of our universities?

    PS – please don’t give me another tirade about the malevolent forces. Take a deep breath and consider each question, quietly, thoughtfully. I am sure my contacts in Victoria – including some in hot spot Melbourne suburbs- would tell me in our daily contacts if there were police with machine guns rampaging in their streets.

  12. Silly me – if I include my generation I have 4 generations of family in Victoria including my 97 year-old mother who has surprised me with her readiness to wear a mask!

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Splendour 2024 cancelled

It's official, Splendour in the Grass 2024 has been cancelled.

We just love him!

If you’re over 50 you might not be a fan of Tom Jones, but you can bet your mum is. If you’re under 40 you might not even know who he is, but your grandmother probably wet her pants at the mere mention of his name.

Peter Garrett gives Bluesfest the nod

If I say the words ‘US Forces give the nod’, I can pretty much guarantee that you will hear the unmistakable voice of Peter Garrett ringing in your ears. Your head may even start to bob up and down a bit. 

Save Wallum finalist in NSW 2024 environment awards

The Save Wallum campaign has been named as a finalist in the Nature Conservation Council of NSW Environment Awards 2024. The award ceremony will be held in Sydney tonight, and Save Wallum spokesperson and ecologist James Barrie will be attending with Tegan Kitt, another founding member of the group.