4/5/2023 0 Comments Australian lockdown“Everyone here is very doom and gloom, but we are averting thousands of deaths with this lockdown and we know the vaccine will end it, it’s just going to take a while to get there.” Webster believes people in Sydney probably won’t be able to socialise in large groups or go to restaurants until next year. Australia has been slow to vaccinate its population compared with other high-income nations, with only 26 per cent of people aged over 16 having received both jabs.Īustralian government modelling suggests that lockdowns will no longer be necessary when 80 per cent of adults are fully vaccinated – a target it hopes to hit by the end of the year. Since it is looking unlikely that Sydney will be able to contain this outbreak with lockdown measures alone, it is “now a race to vaccinate”, says Webster. The virus is spreading through workplaces, households and supermarkets in these areas, but “you can’t stop people doing essential work, living together, or buying food”, says Webster. “They are doing caring work, warehouse work, cleaning, driving – things that are absolutely essential,” she says. The shorter incubation time of the delta variant is also making it harder for contact tracers to identify and isolate potentially infectious people before they can pass the virus on, says Bennett.įinally, the virus has found its way into parts of Sydney that are home to high concentrations of people who can’t work from home, says Angela Webster at the University of Sydney. In another instance, a person appears to have been infected simply by walking past someone with the virus in a local shopping centre, as suggested by CCTV footage. The extreme contagiousness of the delta variant was highlighted when 45 of 50 people who attended a funeral in Sydney that breached the 10-person limit were infected with the virus. The city’s lockdown is now in its eighth week – people can only leave home for reasons like buying food and essential work – but covid-19 cases and deaths are climbing. A Sydney limousine driver who transported international aircrew was infected in mid-June, prompting stay-at-home orders to be introduced across greater Sydney on 26 June. This worked for a long period – in the first half of 2021, the country didn’t record a single death from locally acquired covid-19. Since early in the pandemic, Australia has tried to keep the coronavirus out altogether by banning international visitors, quarantining all Australians returning from overseas and rapidly locking down whenever covid-19 is detected in the community. The city is battling its worst covid-19 outbreak yet, which is being blamed on the highly contagious delta coronavirus variant and low vaccination rates. In Sydney, Australia, the pandemic feels like it is just getting started. NSW authorities reported a slight slowdown in new cases on Tuesday as infections fell to 78 from 98 a day earlier as Sydney and some surrounding areas endure a fourth week of lockdown.The Australian Defence Force assisting people at the Qudos Bank Arena NSW Health Vaccination Centre
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