Meanwhile, the situation in Australia is completely different than the U.S. I'm active in the Aussie ski forum. That ski season is coming up soon. Snowmaking has already started.
Australia's approach is to close off the rest of the world and use lock downs in the major cities when clusters were detected, the number of detected cases, hospitalizations, and deaths was kept very, very low in 2020. However, banking on the Astra Zeneca vaccine as the primary option in early 2021, with Pfizer and Novavax as the 2-shot vaccines, has caused issues with the vaccine rollout. Vaccine hesitancy for AZ is very high, while supplies of Pfizer are limited.
Australia is in the headlines this week because a cluster of community spread was detected. Contact tracing has found nine close contacts so far. Yep, they will impose new restrictions on an entire city for less than 10 detected cases. Note that the term "outbreak" and "cluster" are used differently in Australia than in the U.S. Melbourne is in the state of Victoria. The other big city, Sydney, is in the state of New South Wales. Vaccinations are being organized mainly on the state level, so there are noticeable differences between states.
May 25, 2021, Reuters
Masks, social restrictions return to Australia’s Melbourne after fresh outbreak
https://www.reuters.com/world/austr...bs-melbourne-after-fresh-outbreak-2021-05-25/