New Zealand logged a daily record of 454 community Covid-19 cases on Saturday, APA reports citing The Guardian.

A country of five million people, New Zealand has reported just under 19,000 confirmed cases and 53 deaths since the pandemic began. About 94% of eligible people are vaccinated, with shots mandatory for some staff in frontline jobs.

In Australia, which is opening its borders to tourists later this month, 94% of those aged 16 and over are double-vaccinated, but the country is still battling a wave of the highly transmissible Omicron variant.

There were at least 65 coronavirus-deaths reported across Australia on Saturday.

Source: Azeri-Press News Agency