Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s big admission on Australia’s Omicron nightmare

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has admitted the deadly Omicron variant blindsided Australia – but has warned that lockdowns aren’t the answer.

Scott Morrison has admitted that the Omicron variant blindsided Australia because “we knew it was contagious, but we didn’t know just how severe it could be”.

The Prime Minister has defended his government’s response to the highly contagious new coronavirus strain at a press conference in Canberra.

Conceding he understood voters’ frustrations after the virus infected hundreds of thousands of people over summer, he asked voters to consider that the government was working to protect its citizens and that no response would be “perfect”.

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“We knew it was contagious, but we didn’t quite know then just how severe it could be. Good news – yes, it is much more contagious, we do know that, but the good news is that it’s far less severe,” he said.

The Prime Minister said despite hundreds of deaths in the last week, that the death rate overseas was even higher.

“When it comes to even the large number of more than 350 deaths in the course of the past week, our death rate that relates to Omicron is one of the lowest in the world,” he said.

Mr Morrison said that lockdowns were not the answer to the health crisis unfolding across Australia.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has admitted Australia was blindsided by Omicron. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Gary Ramage

“As we face Omicron, we must respect it, but we should not fear it. We must respect it with sensible, balanced rules, sensible precautions, but at the same time, not shutting Australia away, not locking ourselves up, not destroying people’s livelihoods and bringing our society to a halt,” he said.

“That is not the future. That is the past.”

As he prepares to call an election this year, the Prime Minister remains behind in the polls amid a voter backlash over the Covid outbreak, long queues for PCR tests and shortages of rapid antigen tests.

“You have seen all of these in all of these countries all around the world. That is what Omicron has brought,” he said.

“But that is of no comfort to Australians who had a frustrating and difficult and highly concerning summer and that is something that we must continue to work together to push through.

Rapid Antigen Test (RAT) kits are sold out across the nation. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Flavio Brancaleone

“And Omicron is another big curveball. No response is perfect, I can assure you. There’s no country in the world who can claim that, including Australia or the states and territories, they would readily agree but all leaders everywhere are doing everything they can to support their citizens.”

The Prime Minister said that nobody — including pharmacists making private orders for RAT tests before December had a crystal ball about how bad it was going to get.

“Omicron changed everything and particularly changed it for Australia, because this is the first time we’ve seen this pandemic, the rapid escalation in cases like we’ve seen in other countries in early parts of the pandemic,” he said.

In good news, Mr Morrison said the take-up rate for vaccinations among five to 11-year-olds was one of the fastest seen anywhere in the world.