Delta Variant COVID-19 Infection Approaches 900 Cases, Sydney Extended Lockdown

Illustration of COVID 19 in Sydney, Australia. (Kate Trifo/Unsplash)

JAKARTA - Australian authorities decided to extend the lockdown in Sydney for a minimum of 14 days on Wednesday local time after a three-week lockdown has not been able to stop the spread of COVID-19 infection in the city.

New South Wales State Prime Minister Gladys Berejiklian said restrictions should remain in place until at least July 30, after she reported 97 new locally transmitted cases, a slight increase from the previous day.

"It always hurts to say this but we need to extend the lockdown for at least another two weeks", Berejiklian said in Sydney, cited from Reuters.

"We want to get out of this lockdown as soon as possible and that's why we made this arrangement".

This extension of the lockdown, along with the increase in infection cases to near 900 cases, with two deaths reported, is the first death in the country for this year.

Berejiklian has repeatedly said the lockdown in place since June 26 will only be lifted when the number of newly reported cases circulating in the community while contagious is close to zero.

Of the 97 new cases, 24 are community-infected, meaning authorities expect more cases of the highly contagious Delta variant to come to light in the coming days.

The port city as well as the largest city in the Kangaroo Country, with a population of 5 million people, began to enter lockdown in the early two weeks at the end of last June.

Many non-essential businesses were closed, and most school students stayed at home, with residents only allowed out of the house for essential activities and some sports.

Neighboring Victoria, which spent nearly a third of 2020 under lockdown as the epicenter of Australia's first wave of COVID-19 cases, reported its biggest daily rise in cases in weeks, all linked to transfer teams carrying the virus between states from Sydney.

Illustration of Sydney, Australia. (Wikimedia Commons/J Bar)

Among the state's seven new cases, one attended a football match at the Melbourne Cricket Ground when it was contagious, making the country's largest sports stadium the site of exposure, authorities said.

Hundreds of people in the state have been ordered to be isolated and an apartment block visited by the movers has been locked down. Investigators are examining hints of possible contact, but there is no indication of plans for wider movement restrictions.

"Collectively, as a Victorian community, I believe we can overcome it but if we have to bring in additional weapons, we will", said state COVID-19 response commander Jeroen Weimar.

"The next two or three days will be really critical", he said.

In New South Wales, there are now 71 COVID-19 patients in hospital due to the Sydney outbreak, with 20 people in the intensive care unit (ICU), including one in their 20s and two in their 30s.

The virus appears to have spread to previously unaffected parts of Sydney, and to regional areas, with cases detected in Goulburn, about 200 km (125 miles) southwest of Sydney.

The outbreak has also begun to put pressure on health services, with queues for COVID-19 tests at Fairfield, in Sydney's southwest, stretching several kilometers overnight due to a new health order requiring people leaving the suburbs for work to be tested regularly.

Nonetheless, rapid lockdowns, rapid contact tracing, and tough social distancing rules have helped Australia keep COVID-19 rates lower than many other developed countries.

Cited from Worldometers, Australia has now recorded a total of 31.429 cases of infection, with 912 deaths and 29.534 patients declared cured.

As for vaccination, to date, less than 10 percent of the Australian population has received two doses of the vaccine. In New South Wales, which is battling the Delta variant, health workers have administered more than 2.7 million doses of the vaccine.