Australia's Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, defends the lockdown policy until the bulk of people have been vaccinated
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Prime Minister Scott Morrison defended Australia’s lockdown approach to tackle coronavirus outbreaks until at least 70% of the population has been completely vaccinated.
Here is our COVID19 lock down latest update
Hundreds of people were arrested by Australian police on Saturday during anti-lockdown protests in Sydney and Melbourne, the capitals of the country’s two most populous states, New South Wales and Victoria, which are all under heavy lockdown.
Late last month, the federal government announced a plan that included lockdowns as a key method for containing outbreaks until 70% of the population was vaccinated, followed by a phased re-opening of Australia’s borders after that number reached 80%.
“You can’t live with lockdowns forever, and you have to make that gear change at some point,” Morrison said in an Australian Broadcasting Corporation television interview.
On Sunday, Victoria, which is on its sixth lockdown since the outbreak began, documented 65 locally acquired cases. On Saturday, Australia had its highest number of COVID-19 infections in history, with a spreading outbreak of the highly transmissible Delta strain in NSW and Victoria.
According to health ministry data issued on Saturday, just approximately 30% of persons over the age of 16 have been properly vaccinated, owing to a lack of Pfizer (PFE.N) shots and public apprehension over the AstraZeneca (AZN.L) vaccine.
As supplies grow and the Delta infection spreads, the pace has sped up recently. According to a recent Newspoll done for The Australian newspaper, 11% of Australians have stated that they will refuse to be vaccinated.
Despite a third wave of Delta variant infections, COVID-19 cases and deaths in Australia are quite low, with little over 43,000 cases and 978 deaths.
