Meanwhile in China, residents of a city in the country’s far western Xinjiang region have said they are experiencing hunger, forced quarantines and dwindling supplies of medicine and daily necessities after more than 40 days in a lockdown prompted by COVID-19. Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead on COVID-19, said the organization expected future waves of the disease, but was hopeful those would not cause many deaths. and elsewhere have cleared tweaked vaccines that target both the original coronavirus and later variants including BA.5. In recent weeks, regulatory authorities in Europe, the U.S. The WHO reported that the omicron subvariant BA.5 continues to dominate globally and comprised nearly 90% of virus samples shared with the world’s biggest public database. “If we don’t take this opportunity now, we run the risk of more variants, more deaths, more disruption, and more uncertainty,” Tedros said. The agency issued a set of policy briefs for governments to strengthen their efforts against the coronavirus ahead of the expected winter surge of COVID-19, warning that new variants could yet undo the progress made to date. Still, the WHO warned that relaxed COVID testing and surveillance in many countries means that many cases are going unnoticed. There were 3.1 million new cases, a drop of 28%, continuing a weeks-long decline in the disease in every part of the world. health agency said deaths fell by 22% in the past week, at just over 11,000 reported worldwide. In its weekly report on the pandemic, the U.N. “Now is the time to run harder and make sure we cross the line and reap all the rewards of our hard work.” “Now is the worst time to stop running,” he said. Mr Marshall wants the state to reach 80 per cent double vaccination status before opening domestic borders, a target it is on track to hit in December.Ī similar function allowing people to check-in and confirm vaccination status was added to the Service NSW app on Friday.“We are not there yet, but the end is in sight,” he said, comparing the effort to that made by a marathon runner nearing the finish line. South Australian Premier Steven Marshall said the pilot test “will ensure that the process is secure and convenient and that we are ready when the time comes to reopen our state in the safest way possible”. South Australians will soon have an easier way to show their vaccination status ahead of the state hitting its target to open its domestic borders.Īs of Sunday, more than 58 per cent of South Australians over the age of 16 have been fully vaccinated, and more than 75 per cent have received their first dose.įifty people are now taking part in a three-week pilot test of VaxCheck, a function inside the mySA Gov app that should eventually allow people to show their vaccination status and check-in to a venue through the same app.Ĭurrently, digital vaccination certificates are available through myGov and the Express Plus Medicare app, which generate certificates that can be saved to a smartphone wallet. This all seems a little quaint: 50 people in South Australia are undertaking a pilot of an app that will allow them to show their vaccination status and check in to businesses. The Australian Border Force has been contacted for comment. He said he had been tested three or four times in the two weeks after he was moved to the hotel from Sydney’s Villawood detention centre, but that testing was not being carried out regularly. Salah said that he and many other detainees were yet to be vaccinated. She said crowded conditions, hygiene issues, a lack of information, guards working multiple sites and low vaccination numbers were all factors driving the ASRC’s “deep concerns there could be an outbreak in a detention facility”. “They’re scared and they’ve been scared for 18 months,” Favero said. The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre director of advocacy and campaigns, Jana Favero, told national newswire AAP it was a situation the centre had feared, and despite attempts by detainees to socially distance and remain safe “it’s impossible in the conditions they’re in”. we sit together, eat together, we really don’t know what to do.” He’s currently in the Park hotel in Melbourne where he says detainees found out today that three people had tested positive and others were also showing symptoms. Mustafa Salah, 23, has spent the better part of eight years inside Australian detention facilities offshore and within its borders. Here is more from AAP on the news we mentioned earlier about Medevac detainees in Melbourne contracting Covid:Īn asylum seeker inside a Melbourne hotel being used as an “alternative place of detention” by Australian Border Force says detainees are frustrated and scared after three of them tested positive for Covid.
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