Delta Variant COVID-19 Explosion, Downtown Sydney To Bondi Beach Closed From Friday Night

Bondi Beach Area, Sydney. (Wikimedia Commons/Nick Ang)

JAKARTA - Sydney City Center and the city's eastern suburbs, which include Bondi Beach, will be on lockdown for a week starting at midnight local time Friday, as efforts to combat the Delta variant of COVID-19 infection boom.

The Australian Medical Association (AMA), said the move was not enough and called for a complete lockdown of the country's largest city, to prevent the virus from spreading and causing possible deaths.

"Persons living or working in the four local government council areas in Sydney in the past two weeks have been ordered to stay at home, except for urgent reasons," said New South Wales (NSW) Prime Minister Gladys Berejiklian. June 25.

People are allowed to leave their homes only for essential work or education, medical reasons, grocery shopping, or outdoor sports.

"We don't want to see this situation drag on for weeks, we want to see this situation end sooner rather than later," Berejiklian said.

Local authorities are concerned about the potential for super-spread of one of the salons whose three staff were infected with COVID-19, while more than 900 clients came to the salon between June 15 and 23.

Officials had issued health warnings overnight for more than a dozen new places spread across Sydney, Australia's largest city and home to a fifth of Australia's 25 million population, as the total infections in the outbreak hit 60.

NSW has resisted calls for a strict lockdown, instead imposing mandatory masks at all indoor locations in Sydney, including offices, limiting residents in seven council areas to leaving the city and limiting gatherings at home to five.

The restrictions, which were due to expire on Wednesday, have now been extended to midnight on July 2.

Meanwhile, twenty-two local cases were reported on Friday, the biggest increase in infections since the first case was detected on Bondi Beach last Wednesday in a limousine driver transporting an overseas airline crew. And, 19 of these cases are linked to known infections, while three are under investigation.

Separately, AMA President Omar Khorshid said the latest restrictions were not enough and urged officials to put the entire city under a strict lockdown. He warned of a devastating COVID-19 surge in Melbourne last year that killed more than 800 people.

"What happened in Melbourne was they tried last year to slow down and couldn't get ahead of it and resulted in death. That must not be allowed to happen in Sydney," Khorshid said.

To note, the lockdown, rapid contact tracing, strict social distancing rules and high community compliance have largely helped Australia contain previous outbreaks and keep COVID-19 rates relatively low, with just under 30,400 cases and 910 deaths.