Australia on Monday reported its first confirmed death from the new Omicron variant of COVID-19 amid another surge in daily infections, but the authorities refrained from imposing new restrictions saying hospitalisation rates remained low.
SYDNEY -Australia reported its first confirmed death from the new Omicron variant of COVID-19 on Monday amid another surge in daily infections, but the authorities refrained from imposing new restrictions saying hospitalisation rates remained low.
The authorities gave no additional details about the Omicron death, except to say that the man caught the virus at an aged care facility and died in a Sydney hospital. Australia clocked just over 9,400 new cases on Monday, slightly down from the previous day's record but not including cases from the state of South Australia, which was yet to report its numbers. Most new cases were in NSW and Victoria.
Around the country, the surge in infections meanwhile weighed on testing resources. Sydney testing clinic SydPath had confirmed a day earlier that it wrongly told 400 COVID-positive people they were negative in the days before Christmas; on Monday it now realised it sent wrong result messages to another 995 people.