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.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
Chinese dissident artist Gao Zhen (高兟), famous for making provocative satirical sculptures of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東), was tried on Monday over accusations of “defaming national heroes and martyrs,” his wife and a rights group said. Gao, 69, who was detained in 2024 during a visit from the US, faces a maximum three-year prison sentence, said his wife, Zhao Yaliang (趙雅良), and Shane Yi, a researcher at the Chinese Human Rights Defenders group which operates outside the nation. The closed-door, one-day trial took place at Sanhe City People’s Court in Hebei Province neighboring the capital, Beijing, and ended without a
RSS