Australia hits milestone with 80% rate of COVID-19 vaccinations | CBC News

Once a champion of a COVID-zero strategy to manage the pandemic, the country of 25 million has moved toward living with the virus through extensive vaccinations, as the delta variant has proven too infectious to suppress.

“Another, magnificent milestone, Australia,” Morrison said in a video post on Facebook. “That’s four out of five, how good is that? This has been a true Australian national effort.”

While vaccinations remain voluntary on the federal level, Australia’s states and territories introduced mandatory measures for many occupations and workers. The unvaccinated are barred from many activities, such as dining out or concerts.

On Monday, Australia eased international border curbs for the first time during the pandemic, but only for vaccinated people from highly inoculated states.

The nationwide vaccination figure incorporates some uneven levels.

Nearly 90 per cent of eligible people have been fully vaccinated in the most populous state of New South Wales, and almost 95 per cent in the capital Canberra, but this figure drops to just 65 per cent in the sparsely populated Northern Territory and Western Australia.

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The country recorded 1,558 infections and 10 deaths on Saturday, with the majority of infections in Victoria. Some parts of the Northern Territory are in a snap three-day lockdown, after an outbreak grew to three cases.

Despite the delta variant outbreaks that led to months of lockdown in the two largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne, the national tally of less than 179,000 infections and 1,587 deaths is far lower than that of many developed nations.

What’s happening across Canada

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In Ontario, about 2.75 million more people became eligible for boosters on Saturday morning, as the province made them available to the next priority groups.

They include: people aged 70 and older; some health-care workers and designated essential caregivers in congregate settings; people who received two doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, or those who received one shot of the Janssen vaccine elsewhere; and First Nations, Inuit and Métis people and non-Indigenous members of their households.

The province is already offering third shots to about 250,000 people in some high-risk groups, including long-term care residents and transplant recipients.

Nova Scotia, which has already begun offering booster doses to people who are immunocompromised and those living in long-term care, on Friday announced it would begin offering booster shots to several more groups by the end of the month. 

They include people 80 and older, followed by those in their 70s. The shots will also be available for adult front-line health-care workers who were double vaccinated with an interval of fewer than 28 days between their first and second doses, and people who received two doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine or with one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

People will not be eligible for a booster until six months have passed since their second dose.

What’s happening around the world

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As of Saturday morning, more than 249.2 million cases of COVID-19 had been reported worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University’s coronavirus tracker. The reported global death toll stood at more than five million.

In the Americas, Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers will miss Sunday’s game at Kansas City after being placed in the NFL’s COVID-19 protocol. Because he is considered unvaccinated, he must stay isolated for at least 10 days. Rodgers spoke out on a talk show Friday after testing positive for COVID-19 earlier in the week and confirmed that he is unvaccinated.

In the Asia-Pacific region, New Zealand’s 206 new daily community infections on Saturday carried it past the double-hundred mark for the first time during the coronavirus pandemic, as the nation scrambles to vaccinate its population of five million.

The most populous city of Auckland, which reported 200 of the new cases, has lived under COVID-19 curbs for nearly three months as it battles an outbreak of the infectious delta variant, although restrictions are expected to ease on Monday.

In Europe, Russia’s COVID-19 cases hit another one-day record on Saturday as the country struggles to contain a wave of infections that has persisted for more than a month.

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The national coronavirus task force reported 41,335 new cases since the previous day, exceeding the previous daily record of 40,993 from Oct. 31. The task force said 1,188 people with COVID-19 died, just seven fewer than the daily death record reported Thursday.

Officials cite Russia’s low vaccination rate as a major factor in the sharp rise in cases that began in mid-September. The task force reported about 57.2 million full-course vaccinations, or less than 40 per cent of the country’s 146 million people.

In Asia, Hong Kong scuba diving enthusiasts, unable to travel due to COVID-19 travel restrictions, got a taste of famous Taiwan dive sites on Saturday — at the bottom of a swimming pool.

Photographs of marine wildlife and underwater landmarks were placed in the 25-metre outdoor pool in an underwater exhibition featuring famous dive sites, including Xiaoliuqiu, Kenting and Green Island. There were also cutouts of six sea turtles from different areas in Taiwan waters that floated underwater, as they do in real life.

“I think I haven’t felt this happy for quite some time,” said Lam Sai Long, a travel writer, who hasn’t travelled for two years since the travel freeze started.