PM dismissed efforts to reduce Covid fatalities, claiming Australians die from virus rather than from it

Scott Morrison dismissed the necessity for additional efforts to reduce Australia’s persistent high rates of Covid-19 transmission and fatalities, claiming that many Australians die from Covid rather than from it.

Morrison told reporters on Wednesday that medical opinion presently does not support a fourth Covid vaccine for the general public, and that Labor under Anthony Albanese may revert to lockdowns to tackle Covid.

Morrison has emphasised Australia’s success in combatting Covid in his re-election campaign, highlighting minimal mortality in the first two years of the epidemic, when the country’s borders were closed to the rest of the globe.

However, after just 2,239 fatalities in 2020 and 2021, Australia currently has one of the highest Covid transmission rates per capita in the world, with 5,633 deaths this year alone and a seven-day average of 45 deaths.

Despite the increasing statistics, Morrison has claimed as late as 20 April that the “pandemic is finally passed” because Australians are now “live with Covid,” as the Coalition seeks votes from minor party voters disillusioned with stringent health regulations.

Asked on Wednesday if the death toll was acceptable and what he was doing to curtail it, Morrison said that “every single one of these deaths, from the outset of this pandemic, is a terrible loss”.

“As the number of cases has risen, that’s what was always going to happen – as part of the national plan that we put together with the states and territories, the case numbers would rise, and there were some 53,000 [cases] yesterday,” he told reporters in Armstrong Creek.

“What you see when you have case numbers of that level is that people, when they pass away from many other causes, they will die with Covid, and their deaths are recorded as Covid deaths – but that doesn’t necessarily mean … that they passed away because of Covid, that’s a very different proposition.”

Morrison stated that the premiers, chief medical officer, and health officials were all aware of the distinction.