Australian states reintroduce COVID-19 curbs amid record daily infections

Australia reinstated several COVID-19 policies after the country hit a new record for daily infections despite the country’s vaccination rate of more than 90 percent.

The country saw over 8,200 new cases compared to an earlier record of 5,600 just a day prior, Reuters reported. 

Because of the spike in infections, the country has imposed new restrictions and will now require indoor masking, capacity limits and QR code check-ins. The policies will impact roughly 17 million people of Australia’s population of 25 million, according to Reuters. 

“Today’s changes are modest, cautious and take a precautionary approach as we move through this holiday period to the end of January,” New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet said, per the news service.

Australia endured two years of stop and start lockdowns to battle COVID-19 and had planned to permanently reopen. But now, the highly contagious omicron variant has ravaged through the country, Reuters added.

Studies have found the omicron variant to be less likely to hospitalize people than the delta variant.

In Australia, both hospitalizations and deaths have remained low. But with so many new cases, concerns about health care workers testing positive have grown, Reuters noted.

Even so, the country has fared better than many other places, with a total of 273,000 infections and 2,173 deaths throughout the entirety of the pandemic. 

Meanwhile, the new omicron variant is also dominant in the United States, and cities from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco have seen significant surges in infections this week.