SURFACE MINING
The Boggabri coal mine, Australia: temporarily closed for Covid-19 The current Covid-19 outbreak in Australia, which has put Sydney on lockdown for over a month, has now expanded to Newcastle, a major coal export town, and the Hunter Valley coal-producing region. After a false positive result at the mine site, Japanese trading house Idemitsu was compelled to temporarily close its Boggabri mine.
T
he Boggabri thermal and pulverized coal injection grade mine in New South Wales (NSW) has been given the green light after being shuttered over the weekend with personnel in isolation due to a false positive test by a worker. The epidemic has had little impact on Australia's mining industry, but the more virulent Delta
strain has the potential to inflict greater havoc. After a contractor tested positive for Covid-19, Australian iron ore mining company Fortescue halted some activities at its Cloudbreak iron-ore mine this week. Australia is one of the least vaccinated countries in the OECD and a country which has relied on strong border restric-
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tions and severe lockdowns to prevent the pandemic, despite the fact that these measures are proving ineffective against the Delta strain. Mine workers are being pushed to the front of the line in several jurisdictions as the government ramps up immunization program. The Queensland government has designated fly-in, fly-out and drive-in, drive-out mine workers, as well as teachers and delivery drivers, as a category 1B vaccination priority. This means that everyone in this group, regardless of age, can be vaccinated right away. This is intended to help protect the business in the medium term, albeit working through an already overburdened immunization system will take weeks.
