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Australia tightens Sydney lockdown in ‘national emergency’ Covid-19 scare

2021-07-23 00:00:00.0 海峡时报-亚洲原网页

SYDNEY (REUTERS) - Australia’s New South Wales state on Friday (July 23) reported its biggest daily rise in new Covid-19 cases this year, prompting a tighter lockdown in Sydney in what state officials called a “national emergency” that has already derailed a broad economic rebound.

State Premier Gladys Berejiklian also raised the likelihood that stay-home orders for the country's biggest city would be extended beyond the current end date of July 30.

"There is no doubt that the numbers are not going in the direction we were hoping they would at this stage," Ms Berejiklian said as she announced 136 new cases in New South Wales.

Total infections in Australia's worst outbreak since the peak of the pandemic last year have jumped to just over 1,900 since the first case was detected in a Sydney limousine driver transporting international flight crews in mid-June.

The outbreak of the fast-moving Delta strain was carried across borders to the neighbouring states of Victoria and South Australia, leading to measures that have put more than half the country's population in lockdown.

The curbs have shut down large parts of the economy, even as other parts of the world, including Britain and the United States, open up.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Friday suspended for at least eight weeks the so-called "travel bubble" with Australia that allows movement between the two countries without quarantine.

The Trans-Tasman bubble was a rare quarantine-free arrangement in Asia, where countries have kept their borders mostly closed during the pandemic.

States squabble

Crucially, at least 53 of the new cases in Sydney were infectious in the community before being diagnosed. Authorities have said that figure needs to be near zero for a lockdown in the New South Wales capital to be lifted.

State chief health officer Kerry Chant said a national vaccination programme needed to be refocused on the Sydney hotspots.

“I have advised the government today that this is a national emergency, and requires additional measures to reduce the case number,” Dr Chant said.

A formalised “national emergency” would typically unlock federal government funding and other assistance.

State leaders said on Friday they would have discussions later in the day on the New South Wales request to prioritise vaccines being sent to Sydney’s south-west, where the majority of new cases are located.

“We know that in some places around Australia there are very few cases or zero cases,” Ms Berejiklian said in a televised news briefing on Friday.

“We need to get at least the first jab for as many people as we can in those affected communities as possible, and that’s why we are asking for a refocus of the national vaccination strategy.”

Ms Berejiklian’s comments did not go down very well with other states who are unwilling to spare doses of the Pfizer vaccine.

“We need to be very careful when having a discussion about who we prioritise,” Victoria Premier Dan Andrews said.

Victoria, which is in a lockdown until next Tuesday, reported 14 cases on Friday, mostly in Melbourne.

South Australia is also in lockdown and its state Premier Steven Marshall said: “I’m not wanting to send any of our vaccination doses anywhere else.”

There are 137 Covid-19 cases in hospital in New South Wales, with 32 people in intensive care, 14 of whom require ventilation.

Vaccine roll-out

With just over 32,500 Covid-19 cases and 916 deaths, Australia has fared much better than many other developed economies, but stop-and-start lockdowns and a sluggish vaccine roll-out have frustrated residents.

About 15 per cent of adult Australians have been fully vaccinated, a rate that is well behind many other developed nations, partly after health advice changed over the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine due to rare cases of blood clots among some recipients.