Here's a quick wrap of the COVID-19 news and case numbers from each Australian jurisdiction for the past week, as reported on Friday, May 12, 2023.
The states and territories are now reporting their COVID-19 statistics weekly instead of through the daily updates that were provided from the early days of the pandemic.
This story will be updated throughout the day, so if you do not see your state or territory, check back later.
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The state has recorded 12,980 more COVID-19 cases.
There are 1,292 cases in hospital, 31 of those in intensive care.
There were 59 new deaths announced today.
COVID-19 no longer represents a global health emergency, the World Health Organization says.
It's a major symbolic step towards the end of the pandemic that has killed more than 6.9 million people, disrupted the global economy and ravaged communities.
The WHO's emergency committee first declared that COVID-19 represented its highest level of alert more than three years ago, on January 30, 2020.
That status helped focus international attention on the health threat posed by COVID-19, as well as bolstering collaboration on vaccines and treatments.
"Yesterday, the Emergency Committee met for the 15th time and recommended to me that I declare an end to the public health emergency of international concern," WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
Climate change threatens human life in many ways but one of the less-obvious could be a rise in pandemics.
A warming climate could release ancient pathogens, such as bacteria and viruses, that have been frozen in permafrost in the polar regions for millennia.
Jean-Michel Claverie and his team of researchers recently published their findings on seven ancient viruses found in Siberia's permafrost. One was almost 50,000 years old and still infectious.
He says scientists don't yet know exactly how ancient diseases could impact living species today - animals or humans. In 2021, it was reported that more than 100 ancient strains of bacteria found in Siberia's permafrost were resistant to antibiotics.
The Victorian government has proposed a $5 million settlement to public housing tower residents who were subjected to a contentious COVID-19 lockdown.
A class action was launched by residents of nine public housing towers, who were locked down during Melbourne's second lockdown in July 2020.
It alleges the government wrongly detained residents of the towers for up to 14 days and wrongly threatened them if they tried to leave the towers.
In a notice posted to its website, the state government denies the claims set out in the class action, but proposes to resolve the issue through a settlement without trial.