MELBOURNE, April 3 (Reuters) - Papua New Guinea had 144 new cases of the novel coronavirus as of Friday, with the country's number of known infections nearly doubling over the past 10 days.
The Pacific island nation has logged 6,619 cases and 60 deaths, the National Control Centre for COVID-19 said in a statement on Saturday.
Australia has said, however, that official tallies vastly underestimates the extent of the crisis as Papua New Guinea does not do mass testing.
A vaccination drive that began late last month has been hampered by misinformation shared on social media to the extent that even frontline health workers are hesitant to take the shot. New Guinea, which has a population of roughly 9 million, has been receiving shipments of vaccines from Australia and other countries. It should have enough shots in the next three or four months for everyone who wants to be vaccinated, officials have said.