![]() ![]() Pushing throughĪmid criticism about the government’s response to the omicron surge, the prime minister maintains Australia is well-placed to get through to the other side.By 5:00pm to 7:00pm, the removalists had stopped at the Mobil Ballan Westbound and McDonalds Ballan Westbound, both at 6511 Western Freeway.Īt the time, the crew had arrived in Melbourne on a special workers' permit for freight drivers. “And one plus side of this is if we have a large proportion of the population that is vaccinated and has asymptomatic or mild disease, it may put them in a better place come next winter, which will be the next expected uptick in cases,” Collignon said. … Plus, omicron itself does appear to cause less severe disease.”Īustralia’s initial tough approach toward Covid, followed by its slow but successful vaccine rollout, have meant the number of deaths attributed to the virus has been around 2,500, compared with around 846,000 in the U.S. “Now we’re seeing a tenfold, at least, rate lower than that. “In the initial waves of Covid, for every 100 people infected, we had one death,” he said. “This is serious, we need to take precautions, but it’s not all doom and gloom,” he said. The prime minister and other state and territory leaders point to Australia’s vaccination rate as a key reason why the country will weather the omicron storm. It remains almost free of Covid, but has faced criticism for not allowing fellow Australians to enter, even for compassionate reasons. The one state to have dodged the omicron surge is Western Australia, which has maintained a hard border with other states and territories. In the face of omicron, states and territories have reintroduced some limited Covid restrictions, such as mask mandates and banning singing and dancing at certain venues. … But what we could have done is bend the curve - slow the number of people who got it,” Martiniuk says. Every country is dealing with it, and it never would have been perfect. And KFC restaurant outlets are facing a chicken shortage. Trains in Australia’s biggest city, Sydney, are running on a reduced timetable due to a lack of staff. Supermarkets are short of certain products. The number of daily deaths has jumped from around 10 in December to more than 50. Some states and territories that once went weeks without a case now have thousands or tens of thousands of cases each day. Like many countries around the world, omicron has hit Australia hard. … We barged straight into a dark room without knowing what was in there.” Long lines, empty shelves “We should have changed our plan when we saw omicron arrive. … Scientists, other experts and also some in the public were asking, ‘Hey, is this smart? We actually don’t know omicron well enough. ![]() “ really got down to very few restrictions, just as there was the emergence of omicron. ![]() (Australia did require that international arrivals be vaccinated, leading to the Novak Djokovic saga.)Īlexandra Martiniuk, a professor and epidemiologist at the University of Sydney, said the timing of Australia’s U-turn was not ideal. Practices that had become part of everyday life, such as wearing masks in certain settings and checking into venues via government apps for contact tracing purposes, were soon relaxed. All states and territories achieved this in the final months of last year. And it worked - the nation’s Covid mortality rate has been among the lowest in the world.īut as the pandemic ground on, the government decided restrictions could start to be dramatically loosened when a state or territory vaccinated 80 percent of its over-16 population. ![]() But is it all bad news? ‘Should we be doing this?’įor much of the pandemic, Australia aimed for zero Covid cases, employing regular lockdowns (the country’s second-largest city, Melbourne, was in lockdown for more than 260 days) and extremely strict border policies. Many supermarket shelves are bare as sick workers stay home.ĭespite this surge in cases, most Australian states and territories are holding the line and allowing the virus to circulate in their communities, which critics have labeled the “let it rip” approach. Hallmarks of the pandemic that Australia mostly avoided began to emerge. In just over a month, cases have risen from around 1,000 a day to more than 100,000 a day. But as Australia moved to change course on its pandemic strategy, the highly transmissible omicron variant hit. ![]()
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