THE GUARDIAN: New South Wales announces 136 new local Delta cases with Sydney under the strictest lockdown measures it has experienced
Australia’s most populous state has declared a “national emergency” as it struggles to contain a record-breaking surge of the Delta variant of Covid-19 amid a lockdown affecting half the country.
The state of New South Wales announced 136 new locally-acquired cases of Covid-19 on Friday, with continued community transmission among essential workers, including in supermarkets and pharmacies.
More than a year after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, NSW has broken records for daily case numbers on consecutive days, and the city of Sydney is under the strictest lockdown measures it has ever experienced.
More than 13 million Australians – approximately half the country’s population – are currently under some form of lockdown or restriction, including the states of Victoria and South Australia.
On Friday, the NSW premier, Gladys Berejiklian, called for an urgent mass vaccination program in parts of Sydney, and warned that the city’s outbreak would endanger the entire country. Despite restrictions that have closed restaurants, pubs and bars, general retail shops, schools, offices, gyms and sport, and limited the reasons that people can leave the house, Covid numbers continue to rise. » | Naaman Zhou | Friday, July 23, 2021
