A health worker administers a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at a drive-thru vaccination hub set up on the grounds of shutdown Bunnings Warehouse store in the Melton area of Melbourne, Australia, on Aug 9, 2021. (BLOOMBERG)
Australia hit its target of having 80 percent of people aged 16 and older fully vaccinated against COVID-19, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said, as the country shifts from a strict containment policy toward living with the virus as endemic.
“We did it!” Morrison wrote in a Facebook post. “It’s going to help us to continue to safely reopen and stay safely open.”
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Australia’s two largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne, eased their tough lockdown measures in recent weeks after hitting a 70 percent inoculation threshold, allowing residents to eat at restaurants and re-opening schools. Roughly half of the country’s population spent months under stay-at-home orders this year as authorities battled the spread of the highly-contagious Delta variant.
Authorities have said more freedoms would be introduced after passing 80 percent, with a further lifting next month that will include people who aren’t fully vaccinated.
Camboida
Cambodia has administered at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccines to 13.93 million people, or 87 percent of its 16-million population, Ministry of Health's Secretary of State Or Vandine said on Saturday.
Of them, 13.13 million, or 82 percent, have been fully vaccinated with both required shots, and 1.95 million, or 12.2 percent, have received a third dose or booster shot, she said in a report.
"As of Friday, 10 million target adults, 98.2 percent of nearly 1.83 million target adolescents aged from 12 to 18, almost 1.9 million target children aged from six to 12, and 51 percent of 304,317 target five-year-old kids have taken at least one vaccine dose," Vandine said.
Cambodia launched a COVID-19 vaccination drive in February, with China becoming the key vaccine supplier, and most of the vaccines used in the kingdom's immunization program are Sinovac and Sinopharm.
The Southeast Asian nation registered 73 new COVID-19 cases on Saturday, raising the national total caseload to 119,021 Six new fatalities were reported, bringing the overall death toll to 2,824.
Indian
India's COVID-19 tally rose to 34,344,683 on Saturday, as 10,929 new cases were registered during the past 24 hours across the country, the federal health ministry's latest data showed.
Besides, as many as 392 deaths due to the pandemic has been reported since Friday morning, taking the total death toll to 460,265.
There are still 146,950 active COVID-19 cases in the country as there was a fall of 1,972 active cases during the past 24 hours. "India's active caseload is lowest in 255 days," said the federal health ministry.
A total of 33,737,468 people have been successfully cured and discharged from hospitals so far, out of which 12,509 were discharged during the past 24 hours.
People receive a dose of COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination center in Otara, Auckland, New Zealand, Oct 26, 2021. (DEAN PURCELL / NEW ZEALAND HERALD VIA AP)
New Zealand
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 5 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.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said she wanted Auckland residents to be able to travel for the southern hemisphere summer and Christmas.
Still, she said no decisions have been made on how or when people would be allowed to come and go from the locked-down city, adding that a challenge was figuring out how to manage the land border for tens of thousands of people.
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“No system will be perfect, and it will be challenging, but we are looking at how we can use tools like vaccine certificates and testing to achieve these goals,” COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said this week.