Epidemic in Sydney Delta intensifies, community cases raise concerns Reuters

Sydney (Reuters)-Authorities in the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) stated that they are still finding a large number of new COVID-19 cases in the community, which has raised concerns about new infections as it reports that new infections The number of cases rose for the third consecutive day. a row.

Officials said half of the 24 cases on Thursday were found in the community, while other infected people have been isolated at home because Sydney is about to implement a strict one-week lockdown to contain the highly contagious delta virus outbreak .

New South Wales Governor Gladys Berekiklian told reporters in Sydney: “(This) is worrying. This is the measure of our success that we will consider in the coming days and beyond.”

Berejiklian said that even during the lockdown, many people with flu-like symptoms are still “doing their own thing” and transmitting the virus to others.

“We can’t allow this to happen… Suppose you are infected with the virus, or someone you have been in contact with is infected with the virus and acted accordingly,” Berejiklian said.

For the first time this year, Australia has responded to an outbreak of infection in several states at the same time. Nearly half of Australians are under a stay-at-home order to prevent any major outbreak of delta virus.

Sydney, Perth, Brisbane, and Darwin have implemented lockdown measures in the past few days in response to a variant that spread rapidly a few months after the virus was almost eliminated in Australia. On Wednesday, after an infected passenger stayed at the city’s airport for several hours, the town of Alice Springs, the gateway to Uluru, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, joined the other towns.

Since the first case was detected in a limousine driver transporting overseas crew members more than two weeks ago, the total number of recent outbreaks in New South Wales (the hardest-hit state) has approached 200.

Queensland detected two new local cases because it tracked four different virus clusters-three of which are Delta variants.

Australia has done much better than many other developing countries in controlling new outbreaks during the pandemic through lockdowns, rapid contact tracing and strict social distancing, with just over 30,550 cases and 910 deaths.