Australia Hits Record High Daily COVID-19 Infections, PM Scott Morrison Apologizes

PM Australia Scott Morrison. (Wikimedia Commons/Australian Embassy Jakarta)

JAKARTA - Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison apologized for the slow pace of the COVID-19 vaccination program, in line with the spike in infection cases in the country due to the outbreak of the Delta variant.

This Thursday, Australia again recorded a record daily COVID-19 infection case, after previously successfully handling the COVID-19 wave in 2020. However, the current wave of COVID-19 has hit the Kangaroo Country.

"I'm sorry that we weren't able to reach the values we hoped for earlier this year," Prime Minister Scott Morrison told reporters in Canberra.

It is known, until now Australia has only provided less than 150,000 vaccines every day, far behind other developed countries.

The Australian government has said it will meet its target of vaccinating the adult population by the end of 2021, as the million doses of Pfizer and Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine arrive in the coming weeks.

The spike in COVID-19 cases in Australia today was reported in the State of New South Wales. The most populous state recorded 124 new infections, compared to 110 yesterday, setting a record high daily infections in 16 months.

Most of the infections were reported in the New South Wales capital, Sydney, which has entered its fourth week of lockdown.

"We anticipate the number of cases will continue to rise before they start to fall and we need to prepare ourselves for that," said New South Wales Prime Minister Gladys Berejiklian.

The biggest concern was the number of people moving around the community before being diagnosed, which was 48 on Wednesday in New South Wales, state health authorities said.

Although Sydney is due to come out of lockdown on July 30, PM Berejiklian said cases in the community had to get close to zero first. He appealed to the public to vaccinate.

Separately, the state of Victoria, which is in its second week of stay-at-home orders, recorded 26 new cases, up from 22 the day before. All 26 new cases were linked to a known chain of transmission and 24 were in quarantine for the duration of their infection, state authorities said.

Meanwhile, South Australia, which is also under lockdown, reported two new cases as officials tracked two events at the epicenter of the virus outbreak, a meeting at a winery and a Greek restaurant in the state capital Adelaide.

With millions of people in lockdown for weeks, Australian Finance Minister Josh Frydenberg said the Kangaroo Country's economy was losing up to A$300 million or around US$220 million per day.

With most businesses closed in the country's two largest cities, Frydenberg said the economy is likely to contract when GDP (Gross Domestic Product) figures are published in early September.

"We might expect the September quarter to be negative, of course," Frydenberg told Australia's Channel 7.

However, PM Morrison yesterday said the Australian Central Bank believes a second recession in as many years will be avoided.

For information, launching Worldometers, Australia recorded a total of 32,426 cases of COVID-19 infection, with 915 deaths and 29,743 patients declared cured.