Sydney, Dec. 21 (BNA): Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said today, Tuesday, that Australia must bypass the “heavy hand of government” and the authorities must stop closing people’s lives due to coronavirus-related lockdowns. for a new pandemic high.
COVID-19 cases have broken records over the past several days, an increase fueled by the more transmissible variant of Omicron, but Morrison insisted that curbing the spread of the virus was a matter of personal responsibility, Reuters reported.
“We have to bypass the heavy hand of the government, we have to treat Australians like adults,” Morrison told reporters, urging authorities to shift away from a “culture of delegation” when it came to masks and social distancing rules.
“We are not going back to lockdowns. We will move forward to live with this virus with common sense and responsibility.”
Rapid lockdowns and strict social distancing rules have helped Australia keep COVID-19 numbers relatively low at around 260,000 total cases and 2,154 deaths. But most of the country has reopened over the past few weeks after a higher vaccination despite the threat from the Omicron variant.
Authorities now aim to ramp up dissemination of the booster shots with Morrison urging states to reopen hundreds of immunization centers that closed after demand slowed when double-dose rates in people over 16 exceeded 80 percent.
Despite the rapid spread of the Omicron variant, the federal health minister, Greg Hunt, said “only a small portion” of those cases end up in hospitals. The number of people in hospitals has been increasing, but it is still much less than during the Delta wave.
About 4,600 cases were reported in Australia on Tuesday, surpassing the previous record of about 4,100 cases over the weekend. New South Wales, home to Sydney, became the first Australian state to record 3,000 daily cases of COVID-19, while neighboring Victoria recorded 1,245. Other states have fewer cases.
MI