Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been called out online after comparing his country's vaccination numbers to New Zealand's population, with many social media users perceiving the post as a dig.
Morrison shared a graphic to Instagram on Thursday comparing Australia's vaccination rate to the population of New Zealand, noting that in the last month, 5.3 million vaccinations have been administered in the country.
"That's more than the entire population of New Zealand," the graphic continues.
In his caption, the Prime Minister wrote that more than half-a-million Australians had been vaccinated in the past two days alone - and echoed the same comparison.
"In the last month, over 5.3 million vaccinations have been given in Australia, which is more than the entire population of New Zealand," he wrote.
"We're getting this done, Australia. Let's keep going!"
But the comparison was not received well by all, with one commenter calling it the "dumbest" parallel.
"Give it a rest, ScoMo, you failed us big time," one person commented.
"Why you gotta bring NZ into this," another said.
"Is this meant to be a flex?" a third asked.
Last month, Morrison was forced to apologise for the slow pace of Australia's vaccine rollout, admitting he hadn't "achieved the marks" officials had "hoped for".
"Of course I am [sorry]. But what's important is that we’re totally focused on ensuring that we've been turning this around. I take responsibility for the vaccination programme [and] I also take responsibility for the challenges we've had," he said.
To date, 14,476,323 vaccine doses have been administered in Australia, compromising nearly 9.5 million first doses and over 5 million second doses.
Several Australian states are currently in lockdown as COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc across the Tasman. They are New South Wales (NSW), Victoria, Queensland, and most recently the ACT.
NSW is at the centre of the current outbreak and recorded 345 cases of COVID-19 on Thursday.
