Aug. 17 (UPI) — Australia on Monday reported its deadliest day of the coronavirus with 25 deaths in the past 24 hours, while neighboring New Zealand postponed its General Election a month as an outbreak in its largest city of Auckland continued to grow.
All 25 deaths were reported in the Australian state of Victoria where authorities have been battling an outbreak.
Premier Daniel Andrews announced the increase during a press conference Monday, stating all victims were 60 years of age or older with 22 of the 25 deaths linked to outbreaks at aged-care facilities.
Australia’s previous record of 21 deaths in a 24-hour period was recorded in Victoria last Wednesday.
Victoria’s figure pushed the country’s death toll to 421, though the Ministry of Health had yet to release its official updated figures.
Victoria also reported 282 new cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, its second consecutive day of registering fewer than 300 infections after 279 were announced on Saturday.
“There’s good cause for people to be hopeful for the future, but we just can’t allow any sense of complacency to creep in,” Andrews told reporters.
The new infections inched Australia’s cases toward the 25,000 mark, which placed it well ahead of New Zealand for first in Oceania in both cases and deaths to the coronavirus, as its neighboring country deals with an outbreak in Auckland after going more than 100 days without a case of local transmission.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced amid climbing cases that the General Election that was scheduled for Sept. 19 has been postponed to Oct. 17.
She said the electoral commission had informed her via the Ministry of Justice that this date should be safe and accessible to hold the election, stating that she will not move the date again.
“Moving the date by four weeks also gives all parties a fair shot to campaign and delivers New Zealanders certainty without unnecessarily long delays,” she said.
Ardern said while the decision to move the date was hers, she did speak to the other parties.
“This decision gives all parties time over the next nine weeks to campaign and the Electoral Commission enough time to ensure an election can go ahead,” she said.
Judith Collins, leader of the opposition National Party, responded that it was Ardern’s decision to postpone the election.
“Right now, the focus must be on finding out exactly what failed so catastrophically at the border so we can be sure it won’t happen again,” Collins tweeted.
The archipelago nation was one of the few to have seemingly sidestepped the worst of the pandemic and was looking to reopen borders for tourism with nearby countries earlier this month, when Ardern placed New Zealand back under lockdown following a surge of locally transmitted cases in Auckland.
The country had gone 102 days without a locally transmitted infection until last week when health officials on Tuesday reported four confirmed cases among a family. On Monday, the Ministry of Health announced nine new cases, seven of which were linked to the Auckland cluster, which has now grown to 36 people who have tested positive for the virus.
The new figures lift its total to 1,631 confirmed and probable infections, 78 of which are active, and 22 deaths.
In Asia, India said its death toll to the virus had passed the grim 50,000 milestone after 941 people died over the last 24 hours, for a total of 50,921.
The second-most populated nation, with 1.3 billion people, also reported 57,981 cases over Sunday for a total of 2.647 million, health officials said.
According to researchers at Johns Hopkins University, India was third in cases behind Brazil, with 3.34 million infections and the United States with 5.4 million.
