Australia’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout began yesterday, with top officials among a small group receiving the first jabs a day before the vaccination program starts in earnest.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison was injected with the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine at a medical center in Sydney’s northwest, in what the government said was an effort to boost public confidence in the vaccinations.
Jane Malysiak, an 84-year-old aged care resident and World War II survivor, was the country’s first person to receive the vaccine, followed by healthcare workers and other officials.
Photo: AFP
“She’s taking part in what is a very historic day for our country,” Morrison said.
“Tomorrow our vaccination program starts, so as a curtain-raiser today we’re here making some very important points — that it’s safe, that it’s important, and we need to start with those who are most vulnerable and are on the front line.”
It comes a day after anti-vaccination demonstrations in major cities attracted thousands, with police arresting several protesters in Melbourne, the Australian Broadcasting Corp reported.
Almost 22 percent of Australians said they were unlikely to get the jab, with vaccine hesitancy rising in the past few months, an Australian National University survey found.
The country’s vaccination program is starting months after other nations, following its provisional approval of the Pfizer product for use in January.
The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine was also approved in the past few days, but is yet to be administered.
Reporting a second consecutive day with no COVID-19 transmission in the community, the nation has had 28,926 infections and 909 deaths, ranking among the top 10 in a COVID-19 performance index.
Additional reporting by Reuters
Some say that the third time’s a charm. Not so for SpaceX, whose unmanned rocket on Wednesday exploded on the ground after carrying out what had seemed to be a successful flight and landing — fresh on the heels of two fiery crashes. It was yet another flub involving a prototype of the Starship rocket, which SpaceX hopes one day to send to Mars. “A beautiful soft landing,” a SpaceX commentator said on a live broadcast of the test flight, although flames were coming out at the bottom and crews were trying to put them out. The rocket exploded a few minutes later,
LEGAL ORDEAL: The heavy caseload involving 47 defendants and the vagaries of a Beijing-imposed security law made it difficult for the court to rule on bail requests Dozens of Hong Kong democracy advocates charged with subversion yesterday returned to court to complete a marathon bail hearing that was adjourned overnight when four defendants were rushed to hospital after hours of legal wrangling. Police on Sunday arrested 47 of the territory’s best-known dissidents for “conspiracy to commit subversion” in the broadest use yet of a sweeping National Security Law that Beijing imposed on the territory last year. The defendants represent a broad cross-section of Hong Kong’s opposition, from veteran former pro-democracy lawmakers to academics, lawyers, social workers and youth advocates. Hundreds of supporters gathered outside a courthouse on Monday for the
The plane laden with vaccines had just rolled to a stop at Santiago’s airport in late January and Chilean President Sebastian Pinera was beaming. “Today is a day of joy, emotion and hope,” he said. The source of that hope: China — a country that Chile and dozens of other nations are depending on to help rescue them from the COVID-19 pandemic. China’s vaccine diplomacy campaign has been a surprising success: It has pledged about 500 million doses of its vaccine to more than 45 countries, according to a country-by-country tally by The Associated Press (AP). With just four of China’s many
Sarong-like cloths strung out on lines might seem innocuous, but long-held superstitions around women’s clothes appear to have stopped security forces in their tracks as they move to quell an uprising against a coup by the junta in Myanmar. The country has been in an uproar since the military ousted the civilian government and seized power on Feb. 1, triggering mass protests that the junta has sought to quash with increasingly lethal force. They have used tear gas, stun grenades, rubber bullets and sometimes live rounds against protesters, who are responding with imaginative tactics of their own. The latest involves hanging women’s undergarments
RSS