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A normally busy shopping area in Sydney is almost empty of people on Wednesday July 7th. Sydney’s two-week lockdown has been extended for a week due to the vulnerability of a largely unvaccinated Australian population to COVID-19, officials said.
Rick Rycroft / AP
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Rick Rycroft / AP
A normally busy shopping area in Sydney is almost empty of people on Wednesday July 7th. Sydney’s two-week lockdown has been extended for a week due to the vulnerability of a largely unvaccinated Australian population to COVID-19, officials said.
Rick Rycroft / AP
CANBERRA, Australia – Sydney’s two-week lockdown has been extended by one week due to the vulnerability of a largely unvaccinated Australian population to COVID-19, officials said on Wednesday.
“The situation we are in now is largely due to the fact that we have not been able to get the vaccine we need,” said the New South Wales State Minister of Health, Brad Hazzard.
The decision to extend the lockdown until July 16 was taken on health advice, State Premier Gladys Berejiklian said.
“The reason we have extended the lockdown is because of a number of still infectious cases in the community and we have extended the lockdown to give ourselves the best chance of not having another lockdown,” Berejiklian said.
The extension of the lockdown, which covers Australia’s largest city and some neighboring communities, means most children will not be returning to school next week after their mid-year break.
Of 27 new delta variant infections reported in the last 24-hour period on Wednesday, only 13 were isolated while infectious, officials said. The delta variant is considered to be more contagious than the original coronavirus or other variants.
Only 9% of Australian adults are fully vaccinated, raising fears that the delta variant could spread quickly and uncontrollably.
Berejiklian expected the blockades would no longer be necessary once a large majority of Australians were vaccinated.
There have been over 300 infections linked to a limo driver who tested positive on June 16. He is believed to have been infected while transporting a US flight crew from Sydney Airport.
Nearly half of Australia’s population was confined last week, with cities on the east, west and north coasts tightening pandemic restrictions due to the clusters. Some of these blockages only lasted three days.
Sydney and its surroundings are the only part of Australia still blocked.
Australia has been relatively successful in containing the clusters throughout the pandemic, recording fewer than 31,000 cases and 910 total deaths.
Australia has recorded only one death from COVID-19 since October: an 80-year-old man who died in April after being infected abroad and diagnosed in quarantine in a hotel.
But now there are 37 cases of COVID-19 in Sydney hospitals. Among them, seven are in intensive care, the youngest in his thirties.
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