Australia: Parts of Sydney on COVID lockdown as Delta cases spike

Sydney’s city centre and the eastern suburbs of Australia’s largest city, which include Bondi beach, will go into a one-week lockdown starting at midnight on Friday as authorities struggle to contain a spike in the highly contagious Delta COVID-19 virus variant in the city.

The Australian Medical Association (AMA), which represents doctors, said the move was not enough and called for a complete lockdown of the country’s biggest city to prevent the virus from spreading and causing possible deaths.

People who live or have worked in the four local government council areas in Sydney in the last two weeks have been ordered to stay at home except for urgent reasons, New South Wales (NSW) state Premier Gladys Berejiklian told reporters in Sydney.

People are allowed to leave their homes only for essential work or education, medical reasons, grocery shopping or outdoor exercise.

“We don’t want to see this situation linger for weeks, we would like to see this situation end sooner rather than later,” Berejiklian said.

Only on Wednesday, Berejiklian announced some movement restrictions covering the greater Sydney area to stop the spread of the pandemic.

Despite the lockdown, Berejiklian urged affected Sydney residents not to panic buy.

“[There’s] no need for that. You can go out and buy anything you need any time of the day. We don’t have curfew, we don’t have anything like that.”

Authorities said they were “concerned” about a potential super-spreader event in a salon where three staff were infected and at least 900 clients visited between June 15 and 23.

Officials have issued health alerts overnight for more than a dozen new venues scattered across Sydney, home to a fifth of Australia’s 25 million population, as total infections in the outbreak topped 60.

As of Friday, Australia has reported about 30,400 infections and 910 deaths – low numbers compared with most other countries.

Restrictions extended to July

NSW has held off calls for a hard lockdown, instead imposing mandatory masks in all indoor locations including offices in Sydney, restricted residents in seven council areas from leaving the city and limited home gatherings to five.

These restrictions, which were scheduled to end on Wednesday, are now extended until midnight on July 2.

Twenty-two local cases were reported on Friday, the biggest rise in infections since the first case was detected in Bondi last Wednesday in a limousine driver who transported an overseas airline crew.

A total of 19 of these cases are linked to known infections, while three are under investigation.

AMA President Omar Khorshid said the latest restrictions were “not quite enough” and urged officials to place the entire city under lockdown.

Khorshid warned officials the latest Sydney outbreak could get out of control and reminded officials of the wave of COVID-19 in Melbourne last year, which resulted in more than 800 deaths.

It’s pretty simple, and has been obvious to the rest of the world. You either move to get everyone vaccinated as quickly as possible — or you go in and out of lockdown. Sydney is now feeling the consequence of Australia’s lack of urgency with our vaccine rollout

— Tim Soutphommasane (@timsout) June 25, 2021

“What happened in Melbourne is they tried last year to get ahead slowly and were not able to get ahead of it and it resulted in deaths … that must not be allowed to happen in Sydney,” Khorshid said.

The outbreak has prompted New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to postpone her trip to Australia scheduled in early July.

“We are deferring the PM’s trade mission until later in the year,” a spokesperson for the prime minister said.

New Zealand had already suspended the travel bubble between its capital, Wellington, and Sydney to curb the spread of the virus.

Lockdowns, swift contact tracing, strict social distancing rules and high community compliance have largely helped Australia quash prior outbreaks and keep its COVID-19 numbers low, with just over 30,400 cases and 910 deaths.

NSW has been effectively isolated from the rest of the country after other states reinstated tough border rules in response to the latest outbreak, including a total ban for visitors from Sydney’s virus-hit suburbs.

Neighbouring Queensland and Victoria authorities on Friday said several passengers from Sydney who attempted to enter the states by air without exemptions were sent back to Sydney.

Victoria reported no new local COVID-19 cases beyond the two announced on Thursday, likely linked to the Sydney outbreak. Two local cases were detected in Queensland overnight, both in home quarantine.

A conference of the Australian Banking Association in Sydney where Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Philip Lowe was due to speak next week has been postponed by organisers due to COVID-related curbs.