Australia's governments scrap virtually all safety measures amid skyrocketing COVID cases

Defying “deep concern” voiced by eminent health experts as COVID-19 infections spiral further out of control, Australia’s National Cabinet of Liberal-National and Labor Party leaders yesterday dismantled most testing and other essential safety measures.


Now fuelled by the highly-transmissible Omicron mutation, the pandemic disaster is exposing the determination of big business and its governments to drive up profits and wealth accumulation, regardless of the human cost in infections, hospitalisations and deaths.

Outrage is intensifying throughout the population, as well as among doctors and public health scientists, because the governments are moving nakedly to satisfy the demands of the financial elite for workers to be herded into workplaces, even if ill or potentially infectious.

Today’s official figures are staggering enough. They show that the number of new daily COVID cases jumped nationally overnight from around 21,000 to more than 32,000, exceeding all modelling forecasts. This was just days after first hitting 10,000, thus showing an exponential rise. Hospitalisations and deaths are also starting to surge, for all the official and media claims that Omicron is “mild.”

These statistics underestimate the true level of mass infection. This is not least because thousands of people have been turned away already from overwhelmed testing sites in recent days. Now, the governments are blocking PCR testing to virtually everyone, unless they are symptomatic after a personal household contact for more than four hours.

Read more: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/12/31/acov-d31.html