Australia's former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has tested positive for COVID-19, as case numbers hit new highs across the country and health officials warned that the real number of cases is likely much higher than testing shows.
Susan Pearce, deputy secretary of New South Wales Health, said the state had not yet reached the peak of its omicron surge.
“We expect that peak to occur in around the third to the last week of January,” she said. “We have got some challenging weeks ahead of us. But we have been planning for this pandemic and continuing to reinvent ourselves for two years now.”“The transmission is happening in a variety of settings,” she said. “Obviously in those household and social gatherings that people are having and also in places like pubs, clubs, nightclubs the concern around the behavior of dancing and singing.
Victoria state reported 51,356 cases on Saturday, more than double the number of the day before. The large increase was attributed to a backlog of positive cases resulting from the state’s new self-reporting system. People who test at home using rapid antigen tests are required to report positive cases to health authorities by phone or through a new web-based system.State Health Minister Martin Foley said Saturday’s spike in numbers would stabilize over time to provide a more accurate picture of the omicron spread. He said the high number of self-reported cases “is in many respects exactly what we wanted to happen.
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