The Weekly Round-Up: September 5th 2021

Run For It
4 min readSep 5, 2021

Welcome to the Weekly Round-Up — a series where we bring you five big stories from across the internet that you should know about. This week, we’re talking about who exactly is being left behind by the governments grand reopening plan and wondering how luxury handbags ended up the big winners of this pandemic. But first, we’re figuring out whether we should be going for that second AZ shot sooner than planned.

Come across something throughout the week that you’d like to share? Get in touch with us via Instagram or Facebook to get a story featured in this space!

Photograph: Lukas Coch/EPA

1. AstraZeneca vaccine: if I get my second dose sooner, how protected will I be against Covid?

Earlier this week, the Victorian government announced that they would be reducing the suggested wait times for Victorians their second AstraZeneca dose to six weeks rather than three months. Given the state of the current outbreak, it’s a move designed to reduce the time it’ll take for the state to reach 80% vaccination rates — but some have been left wondering whether doing so would reduce their level of protection against COVID-19. The Guardian spoke to health experts about this and, bottom line, it’s worth doing. The big factor that’s changed how people view things Delta, where whether you’ve had your second AZ dose at 6 or 12 weeks apart, your risk of hospitalisation is cut by 92%.

Source: AAP

2. What women really want from Australia’s National Summit on Women’s Safety

Canberra’s National Summit on Women’s Safety is starting on Monday — and it’s already faced a bit of controversy. Over the course of the two-day conference, experts, advocates and services providers will gather to explore issues faced by women and their children experiencing violence in Australia. The summit will also set up the foundations for Australia’s new National Action Plan, a long-terms strategy that sets out measures to reduce gendered and family violence. In the lead-up to the summit, SBS spoke experts, advocates and survivors on what they believe the plan should look like if it’s going to create meaningful change.

Source: Mala’la Health Service Aboriginal Corporation/Facebook

3. Why Australia’s vaccination goal for re-opening could leave the most vulnerable behind

By now we’ve all heard about the government’s big re-opening plan based around the country’s vaccination rate. A key part missing from this plan? Specific targets for particularly vulnerable groups, like Indigenous Australians. With a general benchmark that doesn’t take into consideration current differences in vaccination rates across communities (which we know already are veery different), experts are calling for specific thresholds to be set for geographic and population sub-groups before considering re-opening. Right now, there’s a concern that people from lower socio-economic backgrounds or other vulnerable groups are being left behind because of the barriers they already face in accessing healthcare. Vaccination rates in Indigenous communities in Western Australia are currently under 10%, for example, with the Australian Indigenous Doctors’ Association recommending vaccination rates of around 90–95% be met before reopening. And the current benchmark set by the government also doesn’t include children below 16, a group that has been more hit by the Delta variant than in previous outbreaks. The way that these experts see it, re-opening under the current plan would leave us facing a resurgence like those in Israel and the US, with our health workforce and system being quickly overwhelmed.

Source: AP

4. Louis Vuitton puts $6 million of JobKeeper in its handbag

As the federal government comes under increasing pressure to publish information regarding the 88$ billion subsidies it provided through JobKeeper, more information is trickling in as to where some of it was spent. This week, we found out that Louis Vuitton claimed $6 million in JobKeeper while recording a boost in its profits and an increase in shareholder dividends. But sure, the people we should be chasing up right now are those on JobSeeker who maybe ended up with a few extra hundred dollars.

Photograph: Brook Mitchell/Getty Images

5. Sussan Ley approves first coal project since court rules she owes children duty of care

A few months after a federal court found that she has a duty of care to protest young people from the climate crisis, federal environment minister Sussan Ley has official granted approval to another coalmining project. This time, it was for Wollongong Coal’s request to expand existing underground coalmining at its Russell Vale colliery north of Wollongong. The project is expected to extract around 3.7m tonnes of extra coal over a five-year period. Oh and also threaten Sydney drinking water catchment and put the health of children at risk. But SO much coal though!

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