Coronavirus-related deaths have fallen since the start of the year, but weekly totals are still higher than at any time in 2020 or 2021. Even with our relatively high vaccination rates, more than 1000 people have died in Australia from, or with, COVID in the past 28 days.

Despite these figures, if there is one thing that's conspicuous by its general absence in this election campaign, it's that once-ubiquitous symbol of life since early 2020, the COVID face mask.

IN THE NEWS:

Government requirements vary from state to state but the latest NSW government advice is that masks are now only required for "certain high-risk settings", such as travel, hospitals and indoor music festivals, although they are still "encouraged indoors for indoor settings" where a safe distance from others cannot be maintained.

Not so long ago, a politician caught in public without a mask risked being criticised for flouting the rules they were demanding of others, but a progressive lessening in focus on the virus - and the impacts it is still having on communities across the nation - has allowed the campaign for the May 21 election to kick off with a little less attention to COVID than might have been expected.

The ostensible justification, as noted, is the putative success of the national vaccination campaign.

What began as Mr Morrison's much-criticised "strollout" has since progressed to the point where the government can say that more than 95 per cent of our over-16s are regarded as fully vaccinated.

Overall, that equates to about 83.6 per cent of the population, putting us in about 20^th position, globally, in among a dozen or so nations sitting at between 80 per cent and 85 per cent vaccinated.

As has been the case since the virus emerged, the burden of illness is skewed heavily towards older people and those with compromised immune systems.

COVID HEADLINES:

Dozens of Australians, most of them elderly and many in nursing homes, are dying every day.

As a range of medical experts are now acknowledging, the ease with which COVID reinfects people means that that a hoped-for "herd immunity" is unlikely.

Our leaders might be showing their full faces for the cameras, but we are not out of the woods.

ISSUE: 39,848

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: