THE Australian state of Victoria extended its lockdown for three more weeks after tough restrictions failed to ease the number of new daily infections of the coronavirus in the state.
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews stated that restrictions will only ease if 70 percent of the eligible residents will receive their first dose of COVID-19 vaccines but only 56 percent of people aged 16 above have received their first dose.
Andrews also mentioned that they need to suppress the case in a tighter manner to give them more time in vaccinating the people and restrictions will not be eased in any way.
Victoria recorded 120 new cases on Wednesday and 76 on Tuesday but less than the cases of neighboring state, New South Wales, with 1,116 cases.
Leaders of both states said that they will not be able to eradicate the virus and are now racing to get their people vaccinated before removing lockdowns, in line with the national plan.
Australia has entered a vaccine swap agreement with Singapore, one of the major constraints on the vaccine rollout, where 500,000 Pfizer vaccines will arrive and Australian government bought 1 million doses of emergency shots in Poland.
Despite the recent ballooning of cases, Australia has relatively stayed in keeping their low number of cases with 54,000 and fewer deaths with only 1,050 fatalities..