Highlights:
- Victorian Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton urges residents to get their 2023 booster dose
- A lab leak may have caused the COVID-19 pandemic: FBI chief
The Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) has approved Moderna's BA.4/5 bivalent booster dose for eligible individuals aged 12 and over.
The Therapeutic Goods Administration had approved the vaccine on 17 February.
Australia has secured three million doses of the vaccine and eligible Australians can access them from April.
The Australian government has accepted seven of the eight recommendations by Professor Jane Halton's independent review into purchasing and procuring of COVID-19 vaccines and treatments.
The government partially accepted the eighth recommendation on greater transparency and access to stock held by the National Medical Stockpile.
The government said "certain information will not be released due to potential impacts that would compromise its security position."
New research from the Australian National University showed residents' confidence in the federal government has increased from 35.6 per cent in April 2022 to 52.9 per cent in August 2022.
In January 2023, it remained steady at 51 per cent.
The research is part of the COVID-19 Impact Monitoring Survey that tracks the pandemic's effect in Australia since April 2020.
On Friday, New South Wales reported a slight increase in weekly COVID-19 cases.
It recorded 7,163 new cases compared to 6,545 last week.
Victoria reported 3,016 new cases compared to 3,052 the previous week.
NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet called for ending the broader vaccine mandate.
He told Sydney radio 2 GB that there was no evidence that vaccines have any impact on the transmission of the COVID virus.
Victorian Chief Health Officer Professor Brett Sutton urged residents to get their booster dose.
He said most Victorians had their last dose six months ago and "now have significantly waned immunity."
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation director Christopher Wray told that the COVID-19 pandemic was likely caused due to a lab leak.
"The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan," Mr Wray said.
"Here you are talking about a potential leak from a Chinese government-controlled lab."
There was a 76 per cent decline in global COVID cases and a 66 per cent decrease in deaths in the past 28 days compared to the previous 28 days, the World Health Organization said in its latest report.
The US, Japan, China, Germany and Korea reported the highest COVID cases at the country level.
WHO is presently monitoring seven Omicron subvariants BF.7, BQ.1, BA.2.75, CH.1.1, XBB, XBB.1.5 and XBF.
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