Australia’s prime minister Scott Morrison confessed on Wednesday that the vaccine delays are dangerous for public health, while the country’s most populous state reported its biggest one-day spike in infections in 16 months.
During his meeting with journalists in Canberra, PM Morrison apologized that his government wasn’t able to achieve the marks that Australia had hoped for at the beginning of this year.
The country spent a lot of budget money during the pandemic in 2020, but it has struggled this year to slow the spread of the highly contagious Delta strain even with more than half its 25 million population under a weeks-long lockdown.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has commented on the situation, saying that a pandemic was costing the economy about A$300 million daily. Now, less than 15% of adult Australians are fully vaccinated while the COVID-19 vaccine delays.
The PM says it will meet its target to inoculate its adult population by end-2021 as millions of vaccine doses arrive from Pfizer and Moderna in the coming weeks.
Delta strain hit New South Wales
In Victoria, 26 new cases were linked to known chains of transmission and 24 were in quarantine throughout their infectious period, while neighbouring Queensland state closed its border to NSW, citing the outbreak.
Despite Australia’s economy was hit by the corona pandemic, PM Morrison on Wednesday said the central bank believes the second recession in as many years will be avoided.
In fact, the economy had boomed here to pre-pandemic levels in the early months of this year thanks to low corona figures. The country’s main airline, Qantas Airways, said in a memo to staff that domestic capacity had dropped to less than 40% of pre-COVID levels and that staff may be stood down without pay if lockdowns continued for “extended periods”.
