The country also now had 30 patients in intensive care units, up three from the day before.

Of those who had fallen very ill, 201 are patients aged over 60. Five deaths were also reported on Tuesday, bringing the tally to 85 so far.

NZ cases ‘seated’ in gang communities, homeless population

New Zealand’s daily coronavirus cases jumped to their highest level in weeks on Wednesday, a setback to its battle to eliminate the Delta variant from its shores.

Health authorities reported 45 new cases, all in the biggest city of Auckland, taking the total number of cases in the current outbreak to 1,230.

The daily rise was much higher than the eight reported on Tuesday, and the highest number of daily cases recorded since September 2.

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Most of the infections were “seated” in Auckland’s gang communities and among rough sleepers, the health ministry said on Wednesday.

“If we think about the current outbreak, how it seems to have seated itself in a gang environment and the homeless, these are people that are less likely to be trusting of the health system,” pacific health director Gerardine Clifford-Lidstone said at an online select committee briefing on the government’s Covid-19 response.

“Finding people within these communities that can promote the vaccine will be very important,” she told MPs. “These are things we’ve started to work on.”

The continuing emergence of daily cases has raised questions on whether New Zealand can eliminate the virus.

A top health official said last week the country may never be back to zero cases again.

New Zealand eliminated Covid-19 last year and remained largely virus-free until a Delta outbreak in August led to a nationwide lockdown. Auckland has been in lockdown for over a month.

A delayed vaccine roll-out, however, means more people are at risk in the latest outbreak.

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Ardern is now facing strong pressure from expatriate New Zealanders and their families back home to drop her “zero-tolerance” strategy and reopen borders.

The opposition National Party on Wednesday said it would end lockdowns and reopen borders before Christmas.

“Delta is here, it may not be possible to eliminate it, and it would almost inevitably arrive into the community again,” party leader Judith Collins said.

Ardern has announced a phased reopening plan for early next year.

Australian government to cut income support

Australia’s federal government will wind down emergency funding for people who lost work during Covid-19 shutdowns, as vaccination rates increase across the country, putting pressure on state and territory leaders to keep their economies open.

The decision to cut off federal support when inoculation levels reach 80 per cent means individual states and territories would have to foot the bill if they decide to go into lockdown in response to any fresh outbreaks of the coronavirus.

This “emergency payment needs to come to an end”, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg told Seven News on Wednesday. “If you look around the world … people are starting to get about their normal lives, learning to live with the virus in a Covid-safe way.”

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Australia’s two biggest cities, Sydney and Melbourne, along with the nation’s capital Canberra, have been in lockdown for several weeks as the country grapples with a Delta outbreak.

The shutdowns have put Australia’s A$2 trillion (US$1.5 trillion) economy on the brink of a second recession in as many years.

Frydenberg said federal income support payments would begin to be phased out when a state reached 70 per cent vaccination. At that level, affected workers must reapply each week to confirm their eligibility. Payments will stop two weeks after the 80 per cent target is met.

That means that New South Wales, the most populous state and one of the epicentres of the current outbreak, would lose payments within weeks. Around 62 per cent of people in the state have been vaccinated, above a national average of 53 per cent.

Queensland and Western Australia, which are currently not receiving any federal income support, have the lowest vaccination rates in the country, with both states not expected to reach 80 per cent until mid-December.

New South Wales state, where Sydney is the capital, reported 863 new infections on Wednesday, level with a day earlier, and 15 new deaths.

Total cases in Australia stood at around 103,000, including 1,278 deaths.

Cambodia dogs train to sniff out virus

Cambodia has won praise for a swift vaccine drive, with the health ministry saying over 98 per cent of the adult population has received at least one dose. Now they are embarking on a new strategy to spot Covid-19 cases.

Joining the fight will be 12 Belgian Malinois dogs the Cambodian Mine Action Centre (CMAC) has trained to nose out unsuspecting patients who might be carrying the virus. In the longer term, the centre hopes to use the dogs at major events, including sports matches, said director general Heng Ratana. “Dogs are more efficient than other tools,” he said.

The University of Health Sciences provided samples of volatile organic compounds – organic chemicals that emit odours – from Covid-19 patients to the demining agency’s facility in Kampong Chhnang province.

The dogs, bred in Cambodia, have so far proven to be very good boys.

“After two and a half months, our dogs are in an early stage of success [so] they could sniff out the scent of Covid-19,” dog trainer Khom Sokly said.

Four are now able to detect Covid-19 placed in a one-metre tube in less than a minute, he said, while the other eight are training to root out the scents in an open space “at any location”.

“In the future, I hope the dogs could take part in preventing or reducing Covid-19 because they are fast,” Khom Sokly said.

CMAC staff said the budding virus-hunters have a few months left in their training regime.

Nearly three decades of civil war and US bombing starting in the 1960s left Cambodia one of the most heavily bombed and mined countries in the world. The kingdom has vowed to clear all mines and unexploded ordnance by 2025, with several organisations working with veteran deminers, sniffer dogs and even rats to reach the goal.

Other countries deploying dogs in the fight against Covid-19 include Ecuador and Italy, where there is a programme in a Rome hospital for training canines to detect the virus in human sweat.

Cambodia largely avoided a mass outbreak during the pandemic last year, but cases surged from the 20,000 mark in May to a total of 110,000 cases in late September and more than 2,200 deaths.

Video of forced tests in Vietnam goes viral

In a video shown on the website of the state-owned Tuoi Tre newspaper, two riot police officers locked the woman’s arms behind her back in front of her crying child as they took her out of a flat in Binh Duong province.

According to the newspaper, the officers broke the lock of the woman’s flat after she refused to attend a routine coronavirus test at her condominium building on Tuesday.

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The woman said she was busy with an online yoga class and did not want to go for the test because the testing site might be crowded, the newspaper reported. The video shows the woman was taken to the site, where a police officer held her arms as a health officer took a swab sample.

Provincial authorities have ordered an investigation of the individuals involved in the incident, the newspaper said. Under Vietnamese laws, people who resist procedures needed to contain contagious diseases and go on to spread the disease face five years in prison, but police cannot break into private household without a warrant.

Reporting by Reuters, TodayOnline, NZME, Associated Press