Ruby Princess linked to 11th Covid-19 death as criminal investigation launched – as it happened

With that news about year 12 students, we will leave you for the night.

Our Australian-specific live coverage will resume in the morning. In the mean time you can follow our rolling global coverage here.

Goodnight, stay well, and stay at home.

On ABC news, Victorian premier Daniel Andrews says that year 12 students will be able to sit their exams and get an Atar — a university entrance score — but possibly not until next year.

Said Andrews:

It is my aim that they can get an Atar, if not within this calendar year, then very soon thereafter.

We’ve got six or eight weeks at the end of the year that we can catch up with, if you like, when school was scheduled to finish. And when we get to that sort of Christmas holiday, we’re in conversations with universities, with Tafe. We’re talking to other states and territories and of course, the commonwealth.

I know it’s very frustrating, including in my own household. I can’t give [my son] Noah who is in year 12 all the answers he wants, but as soon as we can, we will. The key point here is to get this right.

Year 12 end-of-year exams are usually conducted in October and November, with results posted in early December. University offers flow from early of January, in time for the university semester to start in the first week of March.

We will leave you there with a bit of cautious optimism that Australia is beginning to flatten the curve. You can follow our rolling global coverage here.

To recap:

• Police in New South Wales have launched an investigation into the Ruby Princess cruise ship. The investigation will examine possible breaches of biosecurity laws and will be conducted alongside a coronial investigation into the deaths of 11 of the 662 passengers who tested positive to Covid-19.
• The deaths of four of the passengers of the Ruby Princess were confirmed on Sunday. They are three men from NSW and one 78-year-old man from Queensland. The death toll from Covid-19 in Australia sits at 35.
• NSW health minister Brad Hazard has again defended NSW Health staff who made the decision to allow the Ruby Princess passengers to disembark.
• The number of new daily cases in Australia has fallen to 139, and the total number of cases is 5,687. Of them, 91 people are in intensive care, 33 people are on ventilators, and about 2,000 have fully recovered.
• Chief medical officer Brendan Murphy said the daily case numbers in Australia “does tend to continue the trend we’ve seen of flattening of the curve”. However he said he was concerned that 10% of the cases recorded in Australia were from community transmission.
• The federal government may expand its jobkeeper package to allow more casual workers to access the payment, when parliament is recalled to debate that legislation this week.
• The Victorian government has offered free hotel rooms to health workers seeking to self-isolate to protect their families.
• Governments of all states have warned people against heading to regional towns for Easter holidays, saying that hospitals in those areas do not have the infrastructure to cope with a significant Covid-19 outbreak.
• Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has warned she will close outdoor fresh food markets if crowds continue to congregate.
• Tasmania has closed two wards of the North West Regional Hospital after three health workers tested positive to Covid-19, prompting another 18 to go into self-isolation.
• The hard border between WA and the rest of the country comes into effect at 11.59pm tonight.

You can read a summary of the day’s news in Australia here. Stay at home, stay well, and we will be back in the morning.

Police in Western Australia have arrested and detained a 35-year-old Victorian man for breaching mandatory quarantine “on several occasions” and leaving his hotel to travel around the city.

In a statement, WA police said the man arrived in WA on 28 March and was required under orders on the movement of interstate travellers to quarantine for 14 days, or until 13 April.

The man was put up in a hotel in Perth for the duration of his quarantine.

Said police:

It is alleged during the quarantine period, the man breached the self-quarantine requirements that he was bounded by on a number of occasions. He wedged open a fire exit door at the hotel to enable him to leave and re-enter the property without being seen by staff. He utilised public transport to travel within the metropolitan area.

The man has been charged with two counts of failing to comply with a direction under the Emergency Management Act s.86) 1A.

Police added:

The man remains in custody as he was refused bail on the basis that he will likely continue or repeat the offence, which endangers another person’s safety.

Carnival Australia responds to police investigation

A spokesman from Carnival Australia, the company which operates the Ruby Princess cruise ship, just provided Guardian Australia with the following statement in response to police in NSW launching a criminal investigation.

Carnival Australia said:

We have seen the Police Commissioner’s announcement. In addition to willingly participating in the investigation, Carnival Australia will vigorously respond to any allegations of which there must now be full disclosure and the basis for them.

You can read Matilda Boseley’s full report on this issue here.

Here’s some more information about that latest death in Queensland.

Queensland Health just issued a statement saying that a 78-year-old man with underlying medical conditions died in the Prince Charles hospital in Brisbane, after testing positive to Covid-19.

They said:

The man contracted the disease after recently returning from a cruise.

Queensland Health offers its sincere condolences to his family.

Back on Sky, NSW health minister Brad Hazzard says NSW has done more testing for coronavirus than any other state or territory.

That’s true in terms of the raw numbers — it has conducted 140,000 tests to date while the next-biggest state, Victoria, has conducted about 56,000. But on a per-capita basis, South Australia has conducted the most tests.

On the Ruby Princess issue, Hazzard says now is not the time for casting blame on public health staff.

We have got to put our trust in the public health doctors and our frontline medical staff who are trying to look after us and are doing their best... it’s not a time for blame.

An eleventh passenger of the Ruby Princess cruise ship has died after testing positive to Covid-19.

It brings the total number of deaths in Australia from Covid-19 to 35 and the number of deaths in Queensland to five.

Brad Hazzard on Sky said NSW Health allowed the ship to come into the harbour in accordance with a federal government protocols.

He said more than 40 people were swabbed for influenza — not Covid-19 — on the ship before it docked in Sydney. About 15 of those swabs were handed over to NSW Health.

He said more than 100 people on the ship had flu-like symptoms before the ship landed.

Hazzard said NSW health made the decision to allow passengers to disembark based on the information they had at the time, and said that neither he nor anyone who is not a doctor should question that decision.

I think the community could be satisfied that we had the best of the best making those decisions.

NSW health minister Brad Hazzard is on Sky News talking to Sharri Markson about the Ruby Princess cruise ship.

He says he didn’t know “if you could say it’s incompetence” that allowed the ship to dock in Sydney, and 2,700 passengers to disembark.

Hazzard:

These cruise ships have sadly become crucibles of disease, of this disease.