Anti-lockdown protesters attack police in virus-weary Australia

Bloomberg

Thousands of anti-lockdown protesters flooded into Australia’s largest cities, some clashing with police, defying stay-at-home orders imposed as the country grapples with resurgent infection rates and a sluggish vaccination program.
Some demonstrators in Sydney were seen hurling bottles and plants — torn from the sidewalk — at police officers, while others chanted “Freedom, freedom” as they marched along Broadway in the city’s central business
district. A major rally also took place in Melbourne and other protests were being held
nationwide.
More than 50 people were charged with offenses in Sydney, David Elliott, police and emergency services minister for New South Wales, told reporters. “What we saw today were 3,500 very selfish boofheads,” he said, using local slang for fools. “These are the sort of people who are going to prolong this lockdown.”
Millions of Australians, including in Sydney and
Melbourne, are currently under lockdown measures as the country grapples with
the highly-contagious delta variant and a slow rate of
inoculations.
Australia has administered enough doses for just 21%
of its population, according
to the Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker, compared with 53% in the US and 62% in the UK.
Adults in the greater Sydney region should now “seriously consider” using AstraZeneca Plc’s vaccine because of the area’s infection rate and constraints on supplies of Pfizer Inc.’s option, the government’s Australian Technical Advisory Group said.
Australia had last month recommended that only people aged 60 and above should use the AstraZeneca vaccine, which has been linked to rare blood clots.
New South Wales reported 163 new cases in the community on Saturday, and confirmed the death of a man aged in his 80s in southwest Sydney. Infections have reached 1,940 cases since the outbreak began in mid-June.
The neighbouring state of Victoria recorded 12 new cases on July 23, while South Australia reported one.
Australia’s government plans to set new vaccination targets that would allow the country to respond to future coronavirus outbreaks without restrictive lockdown measures, according to Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
The plan would require stay-at-home orders only in extreme circumstances once Australia moves to a second stage of its inoculation program, and the measures would not be implemented at all under a third setting, he said in a Saturday speech.
Australia’s vaccination program is now accelerating after being impacted by supply-chain hold-ups from contracted drugmakers and confused messaging about the safety of AstraZeneca’s vaccine. At least one million doses a week are now being administered, Morrison said.
“The current lockdown is the strictest since the pandemic began.”
“We’ll be setting those targets in the weeks ahead based on the best possible medical, scientific and economic evidence,” Morrison said. Data on serious illness, hospitalisation and fatalities will guide future decision-making rather than case numbers, and unvaccinated residents may be subject to different measures than those who’ve received inoculations, he said.