Sydney slips into lockdown as it tries to contain Covid-19 Delta outbreaks

From midnight Friday, the city of Sydney and its eastern suburbs, including Bondi Beach, will be on lockdown for one week as officials battle a spike in the highly dangerous Delta Covid-19 virus type in the city.

In the flare-up attributed to a limousine driver infected around two weeks ago when he took an international flight crew from Sydney airport to a quarantined hotel, 65 Covid-19 cases have been documented so far. Authorities have subsequently discovered dozens of probable infection sites around central Sydney, including the city's major commercial sector, which were visited by thousands of individuals.

People who have lived or worked in the four local government council districts in Sydney in the last two weeks have been advised to stay at home unless they have an emergency, according to New South Wales (NSW) state Premier Gladys Berejiklian. Only essential employment or school, medical reasons, grocery shopping, or outdoor exercise allow them to leave their dwellings.

Authorities were "concerned" about a possible super-spreader event at a salon where three employees were affected and over 900 customers visited between June 15 and June 23. As the outbreak's total infections surpassed 60, officials issued health alerts for more than a dozen new sites across Sydney, Australia's largest metropolis and home to a fifth of the country's 25 million people.

NSW has resisted calls for a complete lockdown, instead of requiring masks in all indoor venues in Sydney, including offices, prohibiting people in seven council regions from leaving the city, and limiting house gatherings to five. These limitations, which were supposed to terminate on Wednesday, have been extended until July 2 at midnight.

On Friday, twenty-two local cases were recorded, the highest number of illnesses since the first case was discovered in Bondi last Wednesday in a limo driver transporting an international flight crew. Nineteen of the cases have been related to known infections, while three are still being investigated.

The latest limitations, according to AMA President Omar Khorshid, are "not quite enough," and officials should throw the entire city under lockdown.

Khorshid cautioned officials that the latest Sydney outbreak might spiral out of control, recalling the disastrous Covid-19 outbreak that killed over 800 people in Melbourne last year.