The prime minister has defended his handling of the pandemic, saying rising COVID-19 case numbers and deaths were "always going to happen".
Scott Morrison acknowledged there had been 7853 COVID-19 linked deaths in Australia during the pandemic - 65 in the past 24 hours.
"As the number of case numbers has risen, and that's what was always going to happen, as part of the national plan that we put together with the states and territories, the case numbers would rise." he told reporters in Geelong on Wednesday.
More than 6.45 million Australians have contracted the virus, with more than five million of them becoming infected this year alone, according to InSight, the weekly online news magazine of the Medical Journal of Australia.
Australia has reported 38,992 new cases of COVID-19 and 44 deaths so far on Wednesday from NSW, Victoria and Tasmania, Queensland and the ACT, with South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory still to release their data.
"And what you see when you have case numbers of that level is that .... they will die with COVID and their deaths are recorded as COVID deaths but that doesn't necessarily mean ... that they passed away because of COVID", Mr Morrison said.
The prime minister said his position was shared by the Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly and other health authorities.
"We are living with COVID, and not going back to those daily press conferences of people talking about COVID every day, and putting the threat of shutdowns and lockdowns and interfering in people's lives again," he said.
"I will not drag Australia back to those times again."
He pointed out that Australia had one of the highest vaccination rates in the world.
"Australia has been one of the standout performers in managing COVID anywhere in the world," he said.
LATEST 24-HOUR COVID-19 DATA:
NSW: 12,297 cases, 14 deaths, 1395 in hospital with 59 in ICU
Victoria: 14,220 cases, 22 deaths, 510 in hospital, with 31 in ICU
Tasmania: 1179 cases, one death, 45 in hospital with one in ICU
ACT: 1098 cases, no deaths, 74 in hospital with four in ICU
QLD: 10,198 cases, seven deaths, 511 in hospital with 16 in ICU
WA: 16,253 cases, three deaths, 327 in hospital with 12 in ICU
SA: 4072 cases, six deaths, 247 in hospital with 10 in ICU
