Sydney, Europe Brief News – Australian health authorities have urged Australians of all age to wear masks amid Covid-19 resurgence.
The Vice President of the AMA has urged the federal government to counter COVID misinformation, as Australians are advised to wear masks amid a new surge of the virus.
More than 95% of Australians older than 16 have received two doses of a coronavirus vaccination, according to government data. More than 70% of the eligible population — 14 million have had three or more doses.
But the Covid-19 virus persists. Officials have said omicron variants have fueled a recent wave of infections that has coincided with winter in the southern hemisphere. It appears to be weakening. Still, dozens of deaths and thousands of infections are being reported every day.
Leading epidemiologists at the Burnet Institute, a Melbourne-based medical facility, have released new research showing how many lives could be saved if more Australians wore masks.
The institute’s chief executive Brendan Crabb said face coverings continue to be an important defense against the disease.
“We have to change from a high COVID strategy to a low COVID one. We have done modeling with mask use and increasing mask use to say that if that happened even from July that many cases, up to 20% of cases, 20% of hospitalizations, and 14 percent of deaths between July and October could be averted,” said Crabb.
Australia had some of the world’s toughest disease-control measures. Most foreign nationals were banned from Australia for more than two years after March 2020. Australian citizens needed government permission to leave the country. The military was deployed to enforce lockdowns and vaccine mandates were imposed on some key workers
