Australia

CANBERRA, July 6 (Xinhua) -- Australians under the age of 40 could become eligible for Pfizer or Moderna coronavirus vaccines around September or October, the head of the rollout has revealed.

Lt. Gen. John Frewen, who heads the federal government's COVID-19 vaccination task force, on Tuesday met with federal and state health authorities to "war game" problems with the vaccine program, the early stages of which were plagued by supply issues.

SYDNEY, July 5 (Xinhua) -- Authorities of the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) said compliance is key to a smooth exit from the two-week lockdown, as 35 locally acquired COVID-19 cases were reported on Monday.

Of these local cases recorded in the past 24 hours as of 8:00 p.m. local time Sunday night, 33 were linked to previously confirmed cases or clusters, among which 20 were household contacts, and the source of infection for two cases remained under investigation. Two new overseas-acquired cases were recorded in the same period.

MELBOURNE, July 3 (Reuters) - Australia's New South Wales state recorded its biggest daily rise in COVID-19 infections this year, even as residents in several major cities across the country were released from snap lockdowns on Saturday.

Sydney, the New South Wales state capital and home to a fifth of Australia's 25 million population, has been hit hardest in a flurry of outbreaks of the highly contagious Delta variant around the country over the past two weeks.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia plans to halve commercial passenger arrivals due to virus risks as parts of the country emerged from lockdowns Friday.

Australia will reduce its cap on arrivals from 6,000 passengers a week to 3,000 by July 14 to reduce pressure on hotel quarantine, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said after a meeting with state and territory leaders.

SYDNEY (AP) — China’s government and its supporters have monitored, harassed and intimidated pro-democracy Chinese students living in Australia, and Australian universities have failed to protect the students’ academic freedoms, Human Rights Watch said in a report published Wednesday.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia is offering AstraZeneca to all adults in a bid to rapidly ramp up sluggish vaccination rates as more of the country on Tuesday locked down against the spread of COVID-19.

The government late Monday agreed to indemnify doctors who administer the AstraZeneca vaccine that has been blamed for at least two fatalities from a rare blood clot complication in Australia since April.

That exceeds the single death from COVID-19 in Australia this year, and vaccine hesitancy has increased with only 5% of the population fully inoculated.

Sydney, Jun 28 (AP-PTI) Police have fined two men who had to be rescued from an Australian forest after they were startled by a deer while nude sunbathing on a beach and became lost.

The men called for help about 6 pm Sunday after they became lost in the Royal National Park south of Sydney, a police statement said.

Unbelievably, we saw two men sunbaking naked on a beach on the South Coast, Police Commissioner Mick Fuller told reporters. They were startled by a deer, ran into the national ... park and got lost."

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia was battling to contain several COVID-19 clusters around the country on Monday in what some experts have described as the nation’s most dangerous stage of the pandemic since the earliest days.

Sydney in the east and Darwin in the north were locked down on Monday. Perth in the west made masks compulsory for three days and warned a lockdown could follow after a resident tested positive after visiting Sydney more than a week ago.

MELBOURNE, June 27 (Reuters) - Australia urged Samoa's political parties on Saturday to work together to form a government after a top court in the Pacific nation dealt a blow to a prime minister who has refused to accept an election defeat by saying there was no legal reason to delay convening parliament.

The islands' politics descended into chaos after Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, Samoa's China-friendly prime minister, refused to give way after losing a parliamentary election in April that would have ended his 22 years in power.

CANBERRA, June 27 (Xinhua) -- Chief Minister of Australia's Northern Territory (NT) Michael Gunner said on Sunday that NT "is now facing its biggest threat" since the COVID-19 crisis began, adding that its capital city Darwin would enter a lockdown for 48 hours.

The full lockdown was effective from local time 1:00 p.m. on Sunday at Darwin, Palmerston and Darwin rural areas, following confirmation of four new COVID-19 positive cases linked to a mine, according to the NT government's statement.