This handout aerial photo taken and released on Jan 27, 2022 by the Australian Defence Force shows the HMAS Adelaide sitting alongside Nuku'alofa to deliver humanitarian stores and medical supplies following the eruption of undersea volcano Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai on 15 January and the subsequent tsunami. (POIS CHRISTOPHER SZUMLANSKI / AUSTRALIAN DEFENCE FORCE / AFP)
SEOUL / SYDNEY / CANBERRA – Tsunami-hit Tonga said two wharf workers had come down with COVID-19, prompting the previously virus-free nation to go into lockdown on Wednesday, but the waterfront workers were not on docks being used by foreign navies to deliver aid.
There have been fears an influx of international ships and planes delivering badly-needed water, shelter and food after a devastating volcanic eruption had increased the risk of a pandemic outbreak in the isolated Pacific nation. Tonga had recorded only one previous COVID case.
Tongan radio station BroadcomFM reported on Wednesday another three cases had been detected in a family, bringing total case numbers to five
The Australian navy ship, HMAS Adelaide, was known to have 23 COVID cases onboard when it docked at Vuna wharf last week and offloaded 250 pallets of aid to a quarantine zone.
Tonga's deputy head of mission in Australia, Curtis Tu'ihalangingie, told Reuters the two cases were detected at a different wharf and "not the one that the HMAS Adelaide used".
"The wharf that had the case is a different one used for commercial cargoes," he said.
The delivery of aid would not change as a result of the COVID cases, he said, adding, "frontliners will need to be more careful".
The Australian Defence Force's Chief of Joint Operations Greg Bilton said it did not appear the HMAS Adelaide was the source and samples from the two wharf workers would be sent to Australia for testing to verify the origin of the COVID strain.
"I don't think there's any connection, there's no evidence of that," he told Sky News.
Tongan radio station BroadcomFM reported on Wednesday another three cases had been detected in a family, bringing total case numbers to five.
Tongans queued at shops and banks on Wednesday ahead of a lockdown to start at 6pm, as authorities attempt to stop the spread of COVID.
Health authorities were administering booster shots to the public on Wednesday, with more vaccine booster doses to arrive from Australia and New Zealand. Around 83 percent of the eligible population have received two doses of vaccine.
In addition to HMAS Adelaide, three New Zealand and one British naval ships have come into port and unloaded aid pallets. French and Japanese navy ships are also enroute carrying aid.
The Tongan government has insisted on contactless delivery of aid, and all pallets unloaded from aircraft or ships are isolated for 72 hours before being distributed by the local emergency service.
ALSO READ: COVID-19 disrupts aid flight to tsunami-hit Tonga
At a press conference on Tuesday, Tongan authorities said the two workers at Queen Salote wharf who tested positive were vaccinated, and it was unknown if they had the Omicron variant.
In this file photo taken on Dec 22, 2021, health workers conduct PCR tests at the St Vincent's Bondi Beach COVID-19 drive through testing clinic in Sydney, as the number of COVID-19 cases keeps on the rise across the New South Wales state ahead of the Christmas festivities. (MUHAMMAD FAROOQ / AFP)
Australia
Australia reported more than 40,000 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday when more than 50 million doses had been delivered in total during the vaccine rollout.
Nationally there were 70 deaths reported on Wednesday, including 27 in New South Wales, 25 in Victoria, 16 in Queensland and one each in the Northern Territory (NT) and South Australia, according to official figures from states and territories.
According to Department of Health data published on Tuesday night, there were 4,954 cases being treated in hospitals nationwide, including 375 in intensive care units.
Health Minister Greg Hunt on Wednesday announced that Australia has surpassed 50 million coronavirus vaccine doses administered, including more than eight million booster doses.
Health authorities in NT said it was approaching the peak of the current wave of coronavirus infections.
The NT health officials on Wednesday reported more than 1,000 new coronavirus infections and the NT's third COVID-19 death.
Charles Pain, NT acting deputy chief health officer, said that pressure on the health system was "significant at the moment" but that he was optimistic the caseload would reach its peak within days.
"We hope that it will peak in the next few days, the next week or so," he told reporters on Wednesday.
In South Australia (SA), some students began to return to school on Wednesday after the summer holidays were extended amid surging COVID-19 infections.
SA Chief Public Health Officer Nicola Spurrier said returning to school was "a safe thing to do."
"Our modeling does show that we expect to have increases in paediatric admissions, but it's not a high number, and so we're expecting to have a little blip," she told Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio.
"But we're still overall expecting to have our numbers decrease every day over this period of time."
South Korea
South Korea's daily number of COVID-19 cases hit a new record high amid the spread of the Omicron variant, the health authorities said Wednesday.
According to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, the country reported 20,270 more cases of COVID-19 for the past 24 hours, raising the total number of infections to 884,310.
According to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, the country reported 20,270 more cases of COVID-19 for the past 24 hours, raising the total number of infections to 884,310
The daily caseload was up from 18,342 the previous day, surpassing 20,000 for the first time.
The recent resurgence was driven by cluster infections in the Seoul metropolitan area amid the rapid spread of the Omicron variant, which became a dominant strain here.
Of the new cases, 4,186 were Seoul residents. The numbers of the newly infected people living in Gyeonggi province and the western port city of Incheon were 6,018 and 1,396 respectively.
ALSO READ: S. Korea reports nearly 200,000 breakthrough COVID-19 cases
The virus spread also raged in the non-metropolitan region. The number of new infections in the non-capital areas was 8,511, or 42.3 percent of the total local transmissions.
Among the new cases, 159 were imported from overseas, lifting the total to 25,675.
The number of infected people who were in serious condition stood at 278, up six from the previous day.
Fifteen more deaths were confirmed, leaving the death toll at 6,787. The total fatality rate was 0.77 percent.
The country has administered COVID-19 vaccines to 44,641,235 people, or 87.0 percent of the total population, and the number of fully inoculated people was 43,996,409, or 85.7 percent of the population.
The number of those who have received booster jabs was 27,256,749 people, or 53.1 percent of the population.
Turkey
Turkey on Tuesday reported 102,601 new COVID-19 cases, the highest daily figure since the outbreak of the pandemic, raising its tally of infections to 11,722,483.
The death toll from the virus in Turkey rose by 198 to 87,614, while 87,562 people recovered in the last 24 hours, said the Turkish Health Ministry.
A total of 452,173 tests were conducted over the past day, it added.
More than 57.43 million people have received their first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, including 52.42 million who had their second doses. Turkey has so far administered over 142.17 million doses including the third booster jabs.