Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison yesterday batted away COVID-19 worries three days ahead of federal elections, saying that many reported deaths are not caused by the virus alone and promising not to interfere in people’s lives.
Australia reported 66 COVID-19-related deaths and more than 53,000 infections in the previous 24 hours.
“What you see when you have case numbers at that level is that people, when they pass away for many other causes, that they will die with COVID,” Morrison said. “And the deaths are recorded as COVID deaths, but that does not necessarily mean ... that they passed away because of COVID. That’s a very different proposition.”
Photo: AFP
Australia reports a COVID-19 death for anyone who has a confirmed or probable infection with the virus when they die, unless there is a “clear alternative” cause of death.
“We’re living with COVID,” Morrison said. “We’re not going back to those daily press conferences of people talking about COVID every day, and putting the threat of shutdowns and lockdowns and interfering in people’s lives again.”
“That’s not what I am going to do if I am re-elected on Saturday,” Morrison told reporters. “I am not going to drag Australia back into those times again.”
Opposition Labor Party leader Anthony Albanese, whose party is slightly ahead in the opinion polls despite a recent tightening in the race, said that the pandemic remained a risk.
“We need to step up the national strategy. We need look at not just the number of deaths, but also the number of people who are in hospital, and the number of infections,” Albanese said.
More than 95 percent of people over the age of 16 are fully vaccinated in Australia, which the opposition leader said had helped to reduce the impact of the disease.
However, “it’s still a major issue,” Albanese told the National Press Club in Canberra.
Morrison is widely credited with spending huge sums to protect jobs and the economy during the pandemic.
However, the prime minister has been criticized by the opposition for a sluggish rollout of vaccines and self-administered rapid antigen tests.
Tens of thousands of Filipino Catholics yesterday twirled white cloths and chanted “Viva, viva,” as a centuries-old statue of Jesus Christ was paraded through the streets of Manila in the nation’s biggest annual religious event. The day-long procession began before dawn, with barefoot volunteers pulling the heavy carriage through narrow streets where the devout waited in hopes of touching the icon, believed to hold miraculous powers. Thousands of police were deployed to manage crowds that officials believe could number in the millions by the time the statue reaches its home in central Manila’s Quiapo church around midnight. More than 800 people had sought
DENIAL: Pyongyang said a South Korean drone filmed unspecified areas in a North Korean border town, but Seoul said it did not operate drones on the dates it cited North Korea’s military accused South Korea of flying drones across the border between the nations this week, yesterday warning that the South would face consequences for its “unpardonable hysteria.” Seoul quickly denied the accusation, but the development is likely to further dim prospects for its efforts to restore ties with Pyongyang. North Korean forces used special electronic warfare assets on Sunday to bring down a South Korean drone flying over North Korea’s border town. The drone was equipped with two cameras that filmed unspecified areas, the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army said in a statement. South Korea infiltrated another drone
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
Cambodia’s government on Wednesday said that it had arrested and extradited to China a tycoon who has been accused of running a huge online scam operation. The Cambodian Ministry of the Interior said that Prince Holding Group chairman Chen Zhi (陳志) and two other Chinese citizens were arrested and extradited on Tuesday at the request of Chinese authorities. Chen formerly had dual nationality, but his Cambodian citizenship was revoked last month, the ministry said. US prosecutors in October last year brought conspiracy charges against Chen, alleging that he had been the mastermind behind a multinational cyberfraud network, used his other businesses to launder
RSS