The Informer: Covidiots continue to roam the earth

Having more than 500, maybe even 600-700, guests to your wedding is one thing. Obviously if they were in the one venue it'd need to be sizeable. And these days with that pesky pandemic still hanging about, people still going on about social distancing, oh, and that outbreak on your doorstep, it's more than likely you'd need a veritable aircraft hangar or two to satisfy COVID-safe regulations.

Or you could not give a salty fig. And that's where the NSW Police landed on Saturday.

The wedding reception venue in question is barely 10 kilometres from the Berala hotspot in western Sydney. It was estimated at least 600 people were at the reception, despite a COVID-safe capacity of 350.

Not big, not clever. In fact, potentially downright dangerous.

The venue was fined $5000, which, given the cost of wedding venues, would barely dent the bottom line. Now NSW is considering beefing up fines, a clearly very cross acting Premier John Barilaro said.

The other entry in the file was "political activist" Lyle Shelton who has been accused of wasting Queensland police resources over 'sneaky run' border tweet. The former head of the Australian Christian Lobby suggested he had "avoided the "CCP [Chinese Communist party] virus police" prompting the real police to investigate. There was no breach.

While Queensland Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll described it as a poor attempt at humour, the police minister, Mark Ryan, was less generous: "There's a saying here: it's better for people to think you're an idiot than to open your mouth and confirm it."

Queensland has gone 111 days without a case of community-based infection. And they'd like to keep it that way, thanks.

The state's chief medical officer told residents this afternoon to reconsider travel to Victoria or risk getting stuck. It was as clear a message as the one that Victorians did not hear until late last week.

Victoria's Health Department has upgraded the risk for COVID-19 exposure at a pub in central Melbourne among other locations today, including a supermarket. You can check all the "public exposure sites" here.

Victoria recorded three new cases of local transmission from 32,468 tests, with an additional positive case in a returned traveller in hotel quarantine.

NSW had no new cases of community transmission on Monday, with seven fresh cases in hotel quarantine. Those numbers may be down but more than 60 Sydney suburbs are on alert after sewage testing at two treatment plants detected fragments of the virus.

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