As an opening gambit to his re-election campaign, Prime Minister Scott Morrison claimed his handling of the pandemic had saved 40,000 lives. This figure compares Australia over 2020 and 2021 with an average derived across higher-risk predominantly northern hemisphere countries.
He made similar comparisons to much higher-risk countries two years ago, at a press conference on April 7 2020. Morrison and Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy pointed to COVID graphs comparing Australian cases with modelling.
