Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt has praised Australia’s extraordinary coronavirus pandemic response and the way the nation has fared in managing the virus compared with other countries.
Mr Hunt warned however, Australia would not enjoy safety until the world was safe, and that would likely only be achieved through the global rollout of a COVID-19 vaccine.
“There are six community cases across Australia … this compares with over 600,000 cases globally,” he said.
“In particular, there are zero lives that have been lost in Australia overnight – there is one Australian in ICU with COVID, and 9,765 lives that have been lost, agonisingly, at the global level.
“We’re in a situation where the world has over 90 million cases, over 1.9 million lives lost, and each of those is growing at an extraordinary rate.
“All of this is against a backdrop where we have international borders, tracing, testing, and distancing.”
Mr Hunt revealed Australia had an average rate of testing of 476 people per 1,000, with a total of 12.1 million tests undertaken.
Victoria had the highest rate with 507 tests per 1,000 people, while WA had the lowest at 253 per 1,000.
