Australia orders citizens not to travel abroad
SYDNEY, Australia — Australia ordered its citizens Wednesday to halt all overseas travel in an unprecedented move designed to choke off the spread of the coronavirus epidemic.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced at a press conference what he called an "indefinite ban" on foreign travel alongside a crackdown on indoor gatherings in Australia of more than 100 people.
"This is a once-in-100-year type event," Morrison said of the pandemic. "We haven't seen this sort of thing in Australia since the end of the first World War."
"We are going to keep Australia running, we are going to keep Australia functioning, (but) it won't look like it normally does," he said, warning that the measures being taken would last at least six months.
Australia has so far recorded more than 450 confirmed cases of coronavirus, with the numbers escalating daily. There have so far been just five fatalities.
Morrison rejected calls for the government to order schools to close, as has been done in other countries, saying the impact on society and the economy from such a closure would be "severe".
"Whatever we do we have to do for at least six months," he said, adding that among other consequences a long school closure would remove 30 percent of workers from the health industry as parents remained home with their kids.
The ban on overseas travel came as Australia's two main airlines, Qantas and Virgin Australia, slashed international flights 90 percent and 100 percent respectively.
Acknowledging it was "the first time that has ever happened in Australia's history," he said the ban was needed to stop travelers from bringing more coronavirus cases into the country.
The ban on indoor gatherings of more than 100 people applies to "non-essential" gatherings and excluded public transportation, shopping sites and school.
The government had already banned outdoor events of more than 500 people, dealing a severe blow to spectator sports in the sports-mad nation.
Follow this page for updates on a mysterious pneumonia outbreak that has struck dozens of people in China.
New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins says on Sunday that he had contracted COVID-19, testing positive at a key point in his flailing campaign for re-election.
Hipkins saYS on his official social media feed that he would need to isolate for up to five days -- less than two weeks before his country's general election.
The leader of the centre-left Labour Party said he started to experience cold symptoms on Saturday and had cancelled most of his weekend engagements. — AFP
The World Health Organization and US health authorities say Friday they are closely monitoring a new variant of COVID-19, although the potential impact of BA.2.86 is currently unknown.
The WHO classified the new variant as one under surveillance "due to the large number (more than 30) of spike gene mutations it carries", it wrote in a bulletin about the pandemic late Thursday.
So far, the variant has only been detected in Israel, Denmark and the United States. — AFP
The World Health Organization says on Friday that the number of new COVID-19 cases reported worldwide rose by 80% in the last month, days after designating a new "variant of interest".
The WHO declared in May that Covid is no longer a global health emergency, but has warned that the virus will continue to circulate and mutate, causing occasional spikes in infections, hospitalisations and deaths.
In its weekly update, the UN agency said that nations reported nearly 1.5 million new cases from July 10 to August 6, an 80% increase compared to the previous 28 days. — AFP
The head of US intelligence says that there was no evidence that the COVID-19 virus was created in the Chinese government's Wuhan research lab.
In a declassified report, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) says they had no information backing recent claims that three scientists at the lab were some of the very first infected with COVID-19 and may have created the virus themselves.
Drawing on intelligence collected by various member agencies of the US intelligence community (IC), the ODNI report says some scientists at the Wuhan lab had done genetic engineering of coronaviruses similar to COVID-19. — AFP
Boris Johnson deliberately misled MPs over Covid lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street when he was prime minister, a UK parliament committee ruled on Thursday.
The cross-party Privileges Committee said Johnson, 58, would have been suspended as an MP for 90 days for "repeated contempts (of parliament) and for seeking to undermine the parliamentary process".
But he avoided any formal sanction by his peers in the House of Commons by resigning as an MP last week.
In his resignation statement last Friday, Johnson pre-empted publication of the committee's conclusions, claiming a political stitch-up, even though the body has a majority from his own party.
He was unrepentant again on Thursday, accusing the committee of being "anti-democratic... to bring about what is intended to be the final knife-thrust in a protracted political assassination".
Calling it "beneath contempt", he said it was "for the people of this to decide who sits in parliament, not Harriet Harman", the veteran opposition Labour MP who chaired the seven-person committee. — AFP
- Latest
- Trending
