Emergency, Australia Sets Highest Daily COVID-19 Infection Record, Beating Last Year's Record

Illustration of a region in Australia. (Wikimedia Commons/Mat Connolley)

JAKARTA - Australian authorities began distributing supplies of emergency COVID-19 vaccines on Thursday in the suburbs of Sydney, the region hardest hit by the fast-moving Delta variant outbreak, as the country reported its biggest one-day rise in COVID-19 infections.

New South Wales State Prime Minister Gladys Berejiklian said the increased inoculation in Australia's largest city provided some hope as the city battled its worst outbreak since the coronavirus pandemic began.

"The next few weeks will be difficult, but there's no doubt that once we get high vaccination rates, life will feel a lot better, it's going to look a lot brighter", Berejiklian said.

"I know these are challenging times, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel", she continued at a news conference before reporters in Sydney, the capital of New South Wales.

Australia set a dark record today, with officials across the country reporting a combined daily total of 754 cases, surpassing the previous one-day high of 738 recorded on August 5, 2020.

New South Wales accounts for the majority of cases, with 681 COVID-19 infections, with most being found in Sydney's western suburbs. The state also recorded one new death.

Meanwhile, officials are racing to increase vaccination rates across New South Wales as a precondition for lifting lockdown measures in the state.

However, Governor Berejiklian has not officially extended the lockdown, which is currently set to expire at the end of the month. But she has made it clear that 70 percent of the state's population over the age of 16 must be vaccinated, a target she hopes to achieve by the end of October.

The state rate currently stands at 28.5 percent fully vaccinated, slightly higher than the national figure, while about 52 percent have received at least one dose.

Officials allocated more than half of the emergency supplies of Pfizer vaccine purchased from Poland, equivalent to about 500.000 doses, to 12 of Sydney's worst-affected suburbs, to vaccinate people under 40 over the next two weeks.

At least 25 million Australians are currently under COVID-19 lockdown, mainly in the capital cities of Canberra, Sydney, and Melbourne. Kangaroo country currently has more than 41.400 cases of infection and 971 deaths, lower than any other country.

Previously, health officials had warned the country was vulnerable to more deaths and hospitalizations, given that only 27.5 percent of the national population had already received a two-dose COVID-19 vaccine, and half the population had already received a single dose.

Amid these conditions, state leaders are increasingly suggesting differences in treatment, with some pushing for containment of infections, while others looking to find acceptable levels of infection (living with COVID-19).

"Everyone has to learn to live with the Delta variant and in New South Wales, we learn it earlier than anyone else", said PM Berejiklian.