MELBOURNE: Authorities say a COVID-19 cluster in Australia’s second-largest city has spread into to nursing homes.
Victoria state began a seven-day lockdown on Friday due to a cluster in its capital Melbourne.
State health authorities on Monday announced 11 new cases.
A second staff member and a 90-year-old resident of the Arcare Maidstone Aged Care facility in Melbourne were among the new infections. The first infected staff member was reported on Sunday.
The second staff member had also worked at the BlueCross Western Gardens nursing home in Melbourne last week and had not been vaccinated.
The BlueCross facility has gone into lockdown after the news.
Health Minister Martin Foley described the cluster spreading into aged care homes as a “very great concern to the Victorian government.”
The vast majority of Victoria‘s 820 coronavirus deaths have been in nursing homes.
Australia finds more coronavirus infections in nursing homes
https://arab.news/wt82c
Australia finds more coronavirus infections in nursing homes
- Victoria state began a seven-day lockdown on Friday due to a cluster in its capital Melbourne
- The vast majority of Victoria‘s 820 coronavirus deaths have been in nursing homes
US lawmaker Fine criticized by rights advocates, Democrats after anti-Muslim remarks
- Fine’s past comments include calling for the mass expulsion of all Muslims from the US, labeling of Muslims as “terrorists” and the mocking of the starvation and killing of Palestinians in Gaza, among others
WASHINGTON: Rights advocates and multiple Democrats on Tuesday condemned anti-Muslim comments by Republican US Representative Randy Fine who said on Sunday that “the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.”
Fine, whose comments against Muslims have often sparked outrage, has dismissed the criticism and since doubled down on his remarks on social media. The Council on American-Islamic Relations designated the Republican US lawmaker from Florida as an anti-Muslim extremist last year.
“If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one,” Fine said on X on Sunday in a post that had over 40 million views as of Tuesday afternoon.
Some high-profile Democrats including California Governor Gavin Newsom called for him to resign while House of Representatives Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called Fine an “Islamophobic, disgusting and unrepentant bigot.”
Jeffries also called for Republicans — who hold a majority in both chambers of Congress — to hold Fine accountable.
“To ignore this is to accept and normalize it,” Democratic US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said. Fine’s past comments include calling for the mass expulsion of all Muslims from the US, labeling of Muslims as “terrorists” and the mocking of the starvation and killing of Palestinians in Gaza, among others. Rights advocates have noted a rise in Islamophobia in the US in recent years due to a range of factors including hard-line immigration policies and white-supremacist rhetoric, as well as the fallout of Israel’s war in Gaza on American society.
