MELBOURNE: Thousands of Australian students return to school on Monday after a summer break, as the country remains anxious about the spread of COVID-19, which on Sunday killed at least 88 people in the country.
Fuelled by the fast-spreading Omicron variant, infections have exploded in Australia since December, the beginning of summer in the southern hemisphere. In New South Wales, the country's most populous state with 8 million people, more than 700 have died of COVID-19 this year. In the whole of Australia more than 3,700 people have died during the pandemic.
On Sunday, at least 88 people died of COVID-19 across Australia. The death rate has increased sharply recently but remains a fraction of what other developed countries have seen.