Australia's Treasurer Josh Friedenberg said yesterday, Friday, that he was diagnosed positive for the new coronavirus, as has been the case with other senior government officials in the country, just as the daily number of cases announced today exceeded 100 for the first time.000 amid an outbreak of the Omicron variant strain in the country.
Like thousands of Australians, I was tested and tested positive for COVID-19, Friedenberg wrote in a brief message posted on Twitter and Facebook late last night.
I have the usual symptoms and am being placed in isolation with my family, he added, without elaborating further or revealing which strain of the new coronavirus he was infected with.
Other senior Australian officials, including Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce and Defence Minister Peter Dutton, have contracted and recovered from the illness.
Under the current COVID-19 guidelines in Australia, those who are positive for the new coronavirus and those who identified their close contacts are required to be isolated for seven days.
Australia is recording consecutive record numbers of new daily cases, with another sudden increase announced today.
The country recorded 116,025 new cases in the past 24 hours, with this number breaking the record of just over 78,000 new cases recorded the previous day. Nearly 100,000 of the new coronavirus cases were recorded in Australia's most populous states, Victoria, whose capital Melbourne will soon host the Australian Open, and New South Wales.
Victoria noted that its number of new daily cases more than doubled to 51.356 cases from those of the previous day, includes rapide antigen test results from up to a week ago that could only be recorded after being submitted to a website that went live yesterday.
Australia recorded 25 new deaths at the same time, the highest number since the peak of the wave of the Delta variant strain of the new coronavirus in October 2021.
Australian officials, including Freidenberg, are urging the country to leave behind its lockdown strategy now that more than 90% of the population over the age of 16 has been fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
Yet state leaders are introducing restrictive measures amid an explosive rise in cases, largely due to the highly contagious Omicron variant of the virus. Some states have reintroduced the requirement to wear a mask and suspended non-emergency surgeries, while New South Wales yesterday reintroduced a ban on dancing as well as drinking drinks for the upright in bars.
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