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Bureau Report
CANBERRA/ MELBOURNE/ SYDNEY: The Australian city of Sydney has ordered a shutdown of building sites, banned non-essential retail and threatened fines for employers who make staff come into the office as new COVID-19 cases kept rising three weeks into a citywide lockdown.
Authorities in New South Wales State, of which Sydney is the capital, on Saturday also banned hundreds of thousands of people in the city’s western suburbs, the worst affected area – from leaving their immediate neighborhoods for work, as they recorded 111 new cases in the prior 24 hours, up from 97 the day before.
The state also recorded an additional death from the virus, taking the total to three since the start of the year and the national total to 913 since the pandemic began.
“I can’t remember a time when our state has been challenged to such an extent,” NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian told a televised news conference.
The city of five million people, Australia’s largest, has been under lockdown since June 26, with a planned end date of July 30, after an airport transit driver brought the virus into the community and sparked an outbreak of the highly infectious variant, according to the authorities.
More than 1,000 people in the city and surrounding districts have since tested positive.
Of most concern to health leaders is the number of infectious people who were active in the community before they tested positive, with 29 reported on Saturday, in line with previous days.
‘Chasing our tail’
“We are chasing our tail in terms of the cases,” state Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant said at the news conference.
NSW Police Deputy Commissioner Gary Worboys said the “tempo of the police response will increase” across Greater Sydney and regional areas.
Stores that can remain open in Sydney include supermarkets, pharmacies and hardware outlets. All building work must stop until July 30 including cleaning, property maintenance and home renovation, authorities said.
People who lived in three of Sydney’s local government districts – with a total population of 612,000 – were banned from leaving their district for work unless they were emergency workers. The city already has a work-from-home directive for businesses, but employers who told staff to attend the office could be fined 10,000 Australian dollars ($7,402).
Neighboring Victoria State also reported a jump in daily COVID-19 cases to 19, from six the previous day, raising fears it may extend a short lockdown that was scheduled to end on Tuesday.
Victoria and Greater Sydney have a combined population of about 12 million people, meaning nearly half of Australia’s population is under some form of lockdown.
All but one of the new cases in Victoria was active in the community before diagnosis, but every case was linked to a known chain of transmission, Victorian Health Minister Martin Foley said.
Australia avoided the high infection and death numbers of many other countries in the initial stages of the pandemic due to an assertive response that included closing borders, stay-home orders and economic stimulus measures but 18 months on, the federal government faces criticism over its sluggish vaccine rollout. Just more than 10 percent of Australia’s 25 million people are fully vaccinated, according to government data, a fraction of the rates in the United States and the United Kingdom.
Even so, Australia’s death rate from the novel coronavirus, just more than 900 deaths out of about 31,500 cases, is still low by comparison.
The Australian economy had recovered after dipping into recession last year, but the latest lockdowns and state border closures threaten to tip it back into negative growth.
There were no other states reporting additional cases on Saturday.
Meanwhile, Victoria Police is investigating after several protesters flocked to Melbourne’s CBD ahead of the state’s latest lockdown coming into effect.
Officers were called to Flinders Street Station in the city just after 7pm after reports a large group were marching towards parliament.
The group held up signs which read “Sack Dan Andrews”, “A real pandemic needs no advertisement” and “Get off your knees Victoria, this is not a drill, be warned – the weapon is the injection”.
Police say a flare was set off, however no arrests have been made.
The demonstration took place just hours before Victoria entered its fifth lockdown since the coronavirus pandemic began.
A lot of Victorians have expressed their frustration at being thrust back into lockdown, less than a month after the last one finished but Premier Daniel Andrews says he is also angry, referencing the situation NSW is facing with accusations Premier Gladys Berejiklian left it too late to go into lockdown when the latest NSW outbreak emerged in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs.
“You only get one chance to go hard and go fast, If you wait, if you hesitate, if you doubt, then you will always be looking back wishing you had done more earlier,” Andrews said.
The extreme measures are in place thanks to a growing number of local infections linked to the MCG, which have now spread to over a hundred other exposure sites.
There are now just five essential reasons Victorians are allowed to leave their homes as the state government scrambles to prevent a similar situation to the outbreak in NSW from happening.
Reasons Victorians are permitted to leave their home over the next five days include going to work, getting food, exercising, careers responsibilities and getting a COVID-19 vaccine.
While there are concerns the NSW lockdown will extend well past the current July 30 end date, Victoria is hoping their latest lockdown will lift on Tuesday July 20.
