Trent Zimmerman (North Sydney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Health and Aged Care. Will the minister please outline to the House the global status of the coronavirus pandemic and how Australia's response is helping protect Australians and strengthen our economic recovery?

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to thank the member for North Sydney, particularly in his role as chair of the House of Representatives Committee on Health and Ageing. We know that the pandemic has spread during the course of this year at a faster rate than it did last year, with 446,000 cases in the last 24 hours and over 10,000 lives lost globally. In particular, we know there have been over 88 million cases this year, and the world has very sadly just passed 1¾ million lives lost in the year to date. What that means is that in the year to date, in just over five months, we have seen more people lose their lives to COVID in 2021 than in the entire course of 2020. By comparison, Australia, through the very clear process of the rings of containment that were put in place—borders, testing, tracing, distancing and the vaccination program—has seen no people who have caught COVID in Australia this year losing their lives. We have had the death of one person who contracted it overseas. It incubated and emerged during the course of the person's quarantine period.

Against that comparison for the year to date of 1¾ million lives lost globally during the course of the year and none lost here, thankfully, although we are on watch every day, it is very important to understand what that has meant. It has meant that Australians have overwhelmingly been able to live with far greater degrees of freedom. We know that Victoria right now has an enormous challenge, and today will have been a deeply distressing day for so many Victorians. But as a country, as a nation, what we've been able to achieve is we have protected Australians and kept Australians safe on a scale that compares with the rest of the world in a way in which, when the rest of the world looks at us, it overwhelmingly says, 'We wish we were in Australia's position.' We are a country which, in a world of 88 million cases this year and 1¾ million lives lost to this point, has had no person catch COVID-19 in Australia and pass from COVID-19 this year. But that may not always be the case. The challenge is real, the threat is extant and so we are deeply engaged in the vaccine rollout program, as the Prime Minister said. We had a record day, in the last 24 hours, with 133,000 vaccinations. That takes us to approximately 4.5 million vaccinations so far. In the last two days alone, we've had a record two-day figure of 252,000. So Australians are stepping forward. We've been protecting Australians and we'll continue to protect Australians.