Coronavirus: Australia ‘not likely’ to enter Christmas lockdown, despite surge in cases
- New South Wales reported a record 2,566 cases but Health Minister Greg Hunt said the high vaccination rate means Australia is well prepared
- While officials are reportedly under pressure to reintroduce mask mandates, state premier Dominic Perrottet said the state will not reimpose curbs
Health Minister Greg Hunt said he was confident Australia would not need to follow the Netherlands, which has reimposed a strict lockdown over the Christmas and New Year period to curb the spread of the highly contagious Omicron variant.
“We’re going into summer, we have one of the highest vaccination rates in the world and a very different set of circumstances. So we don’t see that’s a likely situation in Australia,” Hunt told reporters in a televised media conference.
The Netherlands, he said, has suffered vastly higher infections and deaths than Australia over the pandemic and is now in the depths of winter when cases were more likely to climb sharply.
“We’re well prepared and people are overwhelmingly … continuing to do an amazing job,” Hunt said, referring to the more than 90 per cent of Australians over 16 who have been fully vaccinated.