2022 was the year of severe flooding, interstellar discoveries, and finally learning to live with the virus that has dominated our world over the past three years.
COVID-19
This year, Australia began to move past many challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic with restrictions lifted, additional booster vaccines provided and government-mandated isolation periods shortened, then scrapped altogether.
That said, 2022 has been the deadliest year of the pandemic for Australia by a large margin, with the Omicron variants sweeping through the nation, largely due to reduced effectiveness of the original vaccines on these new strains.
Dr. Joe Milton from the Science Media Centre reminds us what made Omicron so uniquely challenging.
"With Omicron you had less chance of developing severe disease, but because it spread more quickly, more people got it so we did see more and more cases and more and more deaths despite it being milder."
This led to Australia surpassing the grim milestone of 10,000 deaths from the virus in July.
Carolyn Cox told SBS News earlier this year that her father Jack Moulos, who lost his life to COVID in January, had one wish before he died.
"When we asked him what he wanted for end of life procedures, he said all I want is for someone to hold my hand and that's what we were hoping for, and we couldn't."
Click on the audio icon at the top of the page to listen to this yearender in Punjabi.
