Health

Australia passes peak of infections from COVID-19 outbreak in Melbourne

Sydney, Australia, Aug 14 (efe-epa).- Australia exceeded the peak of contagion of the COVID-19 outbreak centered in the city of Melbourne, which had some 14,000 infections since the end of June, authorities reported Friday.

The Australian state of Victoria, whose capital is Melbourne, registered 372 new infections and 14 deaths Friday, with more than 16,200 cases throughout the jurisdiction since the start of the pandemic, of the 22,600 66 registered throughout the country.

“The trend in recent days shows that (cases) are declining. This suggests that the peak occurred four or five days ago,” Victoria’s Health Chief Brett Sutton said during a news conference in Melbourne.

Sutton said he expects the number of new deaths from COVID-19 to decrease in the next two weeks after 289 of the total 375 deaths occurred in nursing homes in Victoria since the start of the pandemic.

The Victorian government, which holds Melbourne’s 5 million residents under strict confinement, is concerned about the existence of more than 3,100 infections of unknown origin and the spread of the coronavirus to other jurisdictions.

In Victoria, 1,188 health workers were also infected with COVID-19, which forced the closure of several wards of a Melbourne hospital, and the strong impact on elderly care centers is also monitored, with more than 2,000 active cases among residents and personnel.

“We are concerned about the significant number of cases among the elderly. They are at greater risk of dying and we have to reduce those numbers,” Sutton said.

Australia, which had reactivated its economy after suppressing the virus until the outbreak in Victoria, is also fighting against several outbreaks in the state of New South Wales, whose capital is Sydney and where eight new infections were reported Friday. EFE-EPA

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