Sydney, Australia Goes Into Two-Week Hard Lockdown Due To 'Delta Variant' Cases

Sydney, Australia Goes Into Two-Week Hard Lockdown After Authorities Confirm 80 New “Delta Variant” Cases

Cristina Laila 

The Australian city of Sydney just went into a two-week hard lockdown after more than 80 new cases of the “Delta” variant of Covid-19 were confirmed.

The new lockdown covers the entire city of Sydney and surrounding areas.

Police said they will use license plate recognition technology to monitor vehicles to make sure people aren’t leaving their lockdown zones.

This is the first Covid lockdown in Sydney since December (it is currently winter in Australia).

As expected, the latest “Delta” outbreak in Australia is being blamed on slow vaccination rollout.

BBC reported:

The Australian city of Sydney has gone into a two-week lockdown after a rise in the number of coronavirus cases.

More than 80 cases of the highly infectious Delta variant were confirmed in the city in recent days.

New South Wales state Premier Gladys Berejiklian said stay-at-home orders would be in place until 9 July for all of Greater Sydney – with a population of about five million – and the surrounding regions of Blue Mountains, Central Coast and Wollongong.

“When you have a contagious variant, like the Delta virus, a three-day lockdown doesn’t work – if we’re going to do this we need to do it properly,” she said.

“We do need to brace ourselves for a potentially large number of cases in the following days.”

The latest outbreak has fuelled criticism of the federal government’s slow vaccination rollout.

So far, just over 3% of the adult population have been fully vaccinated and about 25% of Australians have received a first dose. Government critics have argued that cities will not need to endure lockdowns again if a majority of the population is vaccinated.