Australia has purchased about 1 million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine from Poland to add to its inoculation efforts in Sydney and the state of New South Wales, which entered a snap lockdown on Saturday.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison yesterday said that the vaccines should start arriving immediately, with more than half to be directed to those aged 20 to 39 in New South Wales, as the state reported its second-largest increase in locally transmitted COVID-19 infections.
Morrison has been under pressure due to a sluggish vaccine rollout, with only about 24 percent of Australians aged 16 or older fully vaccinated, as supplies from Pfizer-BioNTech, seen as the preferred inoculation for younger people, have remained in short supply.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“We’ve been seeing those case numbers rise in Sydney and New South Wales each day and that is terribly concerning,” Morrison told a news conference in Canberra.
“We’ve got to get those numbers coming down,” Morrison added. “You needed more vaccines from us. More vaccines are on their way. They’ll be there this week, and so I need Sydneysiders to stay home so we can beat this thing.”
New South Wales, the most populous state, yesterday reported 415 new locally transmitted COVID-19 infections, the second-largest increase after the previous day’s record of 466.
Of the new doses, 530,000 are to be prioritized for express delivery over the coming week to 12 Sydney districts after their arrival in Australia yesterday night, Morrison said.
The remaining 470,340 doses are to be distributed to other states and territories based on their populations to speed up inoculations of the younger age group.
Concerned about growing infections in rural areas, as recent sewage tests detected the virus in several regional towns, officials on Saturday tightened restrictions and ordered a snap seven-day lockdown across the state.
With infections spiking, it is looking increasingly unlikely that Sydney is to come out of its nine-week lockdown on Aug. 28 as planned.
“Western New South Wales remains a concern, especially in relation to our vulnerable Aboriginal communities, and getting a vaccine to them is critical at this point in time,” New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian told reporters in Sydney.
Yesterday, officials said that four more people had died, raising the number of deaths in the state’s latest outbreak to 46.
Of the new positive cases, at least 66 are people who spent time in the community while infectious, Berejiklian said.
In the state of Victoria, 25 new locally transmitted COVID-19 infections were reported, up from 21 a day earlier, while Melbourne, the state capital, remained in the second week of an extended lockdown.
In Australia’s capital city, Canberra, which entered a one-week lockdown on Thursday last week, two new COVID-19 infections were reported.
Federal and state governments have committed to ending lockdowns when 70 percent of the country’s population of nearly 26 million people is vaccinated.
Poland, which has fully vaccinated more than one-third of its population of 38 million people, said in a statement that the decision to offer vaccines to Australia was taken in light of the outbreak of the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS