The nationwide COVID-19 vaccination rate has officially reached 80 per cent for Australians aged 16 years and older, with Prime Minister Scott Morrison declaring the benchmark a “magnificent milestone”.
“Great news Australia! We did it! We have hit the target of 80% of all Australians aged 16+ fully vaccinated, as set out in the National Plan” the Prime Minister said.
Mr Morrsion sαιδ “this has been a massive Australian national effort, and the work doesn’t stop here. We are on track to have one of the highest vaccination rates in the world.
The more people protected with the jab, the safer we all are so please go and get vaccinated if you haven’t already done so. It’s going to help us to continue to safely reopen and stay safely open”.
But the inoculation levels vary markedly around the country.
The ACT has close to 95 per cent of its population fully vaccinated, but in the Northern Territory the figure is only 65 per cent while 82 per cent of Victorians over the age of 12 are fully vaccinated.
Meanwhile Victoria has recorded 1,268 new local COVID-19 cases and seven deaths.
There are now 16,662 active cases of the virus in Victoria, and 352 people have died during the current Delta outbreak.
There are 651 people in hospital in the state with COVID-19, of whom 106 are in intensive care, and 70 are on a ventilator
NSW has recorded 271 new cases of COVID-19, with all but one being cases of community transmission.
The 270 local positive cases came from 72,350 tests conducted in the previous 24 hours, NSW Health said.
