Parts of Sydney was announced to go into lockdown on late Friday as a COVID-19 outbreak is reported in Australia’s largest city and is continued to grow. An additional 22 locally transmitted cases and imposed a weeklong lockdown in four areas have been reported informed the health authorities. It has been announced that people can only leave their homes for essential purposes.
The outbreak of the highly infectious delta variant that was first detected last week, and 65 people have been already infected.
Gladys Berejiklian, the premier of New South Wales state said, “If you live or work in those local government areas, you need to stay at home unless absolutely necessary.” She further said that the lockdown was about to go into effect just before the midnight but it would have created a significant impact on businesses, especially in the central business district of the city of more than 5 million people.
“This is in order for us to ensure that this doesn’t take a hold for weeks and weeks, and we believe this is a proportionate response to the risk,” Berejiklian said.
A day earlier, the premier had said there wasn’t any need for further restrictions despite it being the “scariest period” the state had been through during the pandemic. Berejiklian herself tested negative for the virus after her Agriculture Minister Adam Marshall tested positive.
It has announced by the Health Minister Brad Hazzard that people must self-isolate themselves who came in close contact of a COVID-19 case in Parliament House. The local council areas in Sydney headed for lockdown are Woollahra, Waverley, Randwick and the City of Sydney.
It has been said that people can only leave their homes only for important reasons like essential work or education, shopping, and exercise.
According to authorities, the cluster spread from a Sydney airport limousine driver and he was not vaccinated, reportedly did not wear a mask and is suspected to have been infected while transporting a foreign air crew. All the borders have been closed by the Australian states to travelers either from parts of Sydney or from anywhere in New South Wales.
Meanwhile, New Zealand has stopped quarantine-free travel with the state until at least July 6. It has been reported that one of the people infected traveled to New Zealand’s capital Wellington last weekend, visiting restaurants, bars and tourist spots.
That prompted some restrictions in Wellington, although no one in the city has tested positive so far. Australia has been relatively successful in containing coronavirus clusters, although the delta variant first detected in India is proving more challenging. And the nation’s vaccine rollout has been slower than in many other developed countries, with only about one-quarter of the population having gotten at least one dose.
The pandemic has claimed 910 deaths in Australia, which has a population of 26 million. The only COVID-19 death since October was an 80-year-old man who became infected overseas and was diagnosed in hotel quarantine.
They tried grocery giveaways and lotteries for new cars and apartments. But an ambitious plan of vaccinating 30 million Russians by mid-June still has fallen short by a third. So now, many regional governments across the vast country are obligating some workers to get vaccinated and requiring the shots to enter certain businesses, like restaurants.
As many Western countries lift coronavirus restrictions and plan a return to normal life after mass vaccinations, Russia is battling a surge of infections — even though it was the first in the world to authorize a vaccine and among the first to start administering it in December. The daily new cases have raised from about 9,000 in early June to about 17,000 on June 18 and over 20,000 on Thursday with Moscow, its outlying region and St Petersburg combining for about half of all new infections.
Only 20.7 million people, or 14 per cent of its population of 146 million, have received at least one shot as of Wednesday, and only 16.7 million, or about 11 per cent, have been fully vaccinated.
Officials have blamed Russians’ lax attitude toward taking necessary precautions and the growing prevalence of more infectious variants. But perhaps the biggest factor is the lack of vaccinations.
