With just days until Christmas, COVID-19 testing sites are overwhelmed with people anxious to get the all clear to be able to safely attend yuletide celebrations. Newcastle remains the epicentre of the Omicron outbreak, with 5169 active cases now in the Hunter region, and 820 new cases. Two people died from the virus including a vaccinated man in his 80s from Sydney’s south who had underlying health conditions.Īn unvaccinated woman in her 70s from the Central West with underlying health conditions died at the Gosling Creek Aged Care facility. NSW has reported a record 3057 new COVID-19 cases amid pressure to re-introduce mask mandates. There are 284 COVID-19 patients in hospital - up from 261 - and 39 people are in ICU - up from 33 and 11 are ventilated. That’s 556 more than the previous day’s 2501 cases. There were 3057 cases recorded in the 24 hours until 8pm on Monday from 136,972 tests. NSW has broken another national record after more than 3000 people were diagnosed with COVID-19 in a single day. She favoured incorporating rapid antigen tests into Australia’s existing official screening regime.Īhead of the emergency meeting on Wednesday, here are the latest COVID-19 developments across Australia. “We need a certain nimbleness that we haven’t had to date in terms of thinking about how we do alter the testing procedures,” University of Melbourne epidemiologist Nancy Baxter told ABC radio. Meanwhile, there’s a push to make rapid antigen tests free as many traditional testing sites across the country are overwhelmed and demand forces some to close. PM calls emergency National Cabinet meeting as Omicron cases grow They also call for indoor crowd caps reintroduced over the Christmas and New Year period. The Royal Australasian College of Physicians wants governments to bring back, or maintain, mandatory indoor masks and QR code check-ins across the board. “COVID-19 has thrown many different challenges at governments, and we need to be able to respond to these, otherwise we put people’s lives and livelihoods at risk.” “Tightening public health restrictions should not be seen as a policy failure,” president Omar Khorshid said. The Australian Medical Association is calling on states and territories to agree on a unified approach to tackling Omicron. Scott Morrison will meet with state and territory leaders to discuss the new Omicron COVID variant. “As a country, we’ve got to get past the heavy hand of government and we’ve got to treat Australians like adults,” he said. That’s how we live with this virus into the future. China no longer publishes regular official nationwide estimates of infections.“What that means is we have to move from a culture of mandates to a culture of responsibility. (That would be up from what he estimated at 40 million infections a week in late May. Zhong Nanshan, a prominent doctor who was among the first to openly confirm in early 2020 that COVID could easily spread among people, estimated Monday that by late June, as many as 65 million people a week could become infected with the coronavirus across China. Chinese health authorities have reported a rise in COVID-19 cases since April, especially from newer subvariants that are spreading across the world. Until late last year, its national leadership was still ready to lock down whole neighborhoods and districts, even cities, in a bid to stamp out what were sometimes just small clusters of cases. Although other countries have long settled into such a pattern, it is a shift for China. Half a year on, COVID-19 cases again are on the rise, but this time, the nation appears to be determined to press on with normal life as the government focuses on reigniting economic growth. In December, China abruptly abandoned its draconian "zero-COVID” policies, battered by a surge of infections and rising public anger against lockdowns.
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