Sydney – The Australian city of Sydney prolonged a lockdown by 4 weeks on Wednesday after an already protracted stay-at-home order failed to douse a COVID-19 outbreak, with the authorities warning of tougher policing to stamp out non-compliance.
Far from a planned exit from lockdown in three days, the city of 5 million individuals and neighbouring regional centres spanning 200 km (120 miles) of coastline were advised to stay home till Aug. 28 following persistently high case numbers since a flare-up of the virulent Delta variant began last month.
The state of New South Wales, of which Sydney is the capital, reported 177 new cases for Tuesday, from 172 on Monday. That’s the biggest increase since an unmasked, unvaccinated airport driver was mentioned to have sparked the current outbreak. The state also reported the demise of a woman in her 90s, the 11th demise of the outbreak.
Of particular concern, at least 46 of the new cases were individuals active in the community before being identified, raising the likelihood of transmission, mentioned the authorities, who’ve cautioned that active community transmission must be near zero before relaxing the rules.
“I am as upset and frustrated as all of you that we were not able to get the case numbers we would have liked at this point in time but that is the reality,” mentioned NSW State Premier Gladys Berejiklian at a televised news conference.
Berejiklian added that police would boost enforcement of wide-ranging social distancing rules and urged individuals to report suspected wrongdoing, saying “we cannot put up with folks continuing to do the wrong thing because it’s setting us all back”.
In a single case, a mourning ceremony attended by 50 individuals in violation of lockdown rules resulted in 45 infections, she mentioned.
The extension turns what was initially intended to be a “snap” lockdown of Australia’s most populous city into one of the nation’s longest since the beginning of the pandemic, and may spark the second recession of the A$2 trillion ($1.47 trillion) national economy in two years, according to economists.
To minimise the financial impact, the NSW government mentioned it might lift a ban on non-occupied construction in most of Sydney. However, it expanded a list of local government areas throughout the city where the ban would stay because of the prevalence of COVID-19 cases there.
