COVID-19 pandemic in Australia

China reported 13,000 Covid cases on Sunday, the most since the peak of the first pandemic wave over two years ago, as health officials said they have found a suspected new subtype of the Omicron variant in the Shanghai area.

China's "zero-Covid" strategy is under extreme pressure as the virus whips across the country.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, 4,274 patients have been discharged from the ICU

U.S. researchers have identified irrefutable evidence of lockdown damage and the urgent need to ban it during a pandemic.

According to researchers at Johns Hopkins University, the restrictions imposed in the spring of 2020 due to the coronavirus had little effect on mortality in the United States and Europe but led to serious economic and social damage.

In the Australian state of New South Wales, 72.8 percent of people aged 16 and over have been vaccinated, the Guardian reported.
The delta strain wave, which began in June, kept five million New South Wales residents under strong restrictive measures for 15 weeks.
Taking the example of Great Britain, Australians called Monday "Freedom Day".

Australia will begin to reopen its borders next month, the country's prime minister said on Oct. 1, 18 months after citizens were banned from traveling overseas without permission.

Scott Morrison said vaccinated Australians would be able to return home and travel overseas "within weeks" as 80 percent vaccination targets are met.

Australian police arrested 235 people in Melbourne and 32 in Sydney on Saturday, at illegal rallies against quarantine and "measures" imposed due to the coronavirus pandemic, while several police officers were injured in clashes with protesters.
Victoria State Police said six police officers were hospitalized.

Australia's second-largest city, Melbourne, extended its lockdown on Aug. 11 in a bid to stamp out an outbreak of COVID-19, while authorities in Sydney said they were considering easing restrictions for vaccinated residents despite the delta variant continuing to spread.

class='cf'>

About 300 soldiers arrived in Sydney at the request of the state police of New South Wales.
They will deliver food packages and check door to door that quarantine is being respected. The closure measures are in force in Sydney for five weeks and should last until the end of August.

Australia's two largest states reported sharp increases in new COVID-19 cases on July 21, a blow to hopes that lockdown restrictions would be lifted with more than half the country's population under stay-at-home orders.   

Sydney's two-week lockdown has been extended for another week due to the vulnerability of an Australian population largely unvaccinated against COVID-19, officials said on July 7.

"The situation we're in now is largely because we haven't been able to get the vaccine that we need," New South Wales state Health Minister Brad Hazzard said.