Brisbane, Australia’s third-largest city, will lift its lockdown on Sunday after controlling a viral cluster, while an outbreak in Sydney that has paralyzed the city for weeks continues to spread.
After an outbreak of more than 100 cases spread throughout many school communities, millions of people in Brisbane and adjacent areas were ordered to stay at home for only eight days.
Queensland’s deputy premier, Steven Miles, claimed the region has accomplished “something rather extraordinary” by successfully containing the outbreak.
He told reporters, “It appears that we may have been able to contain a Delta outbreak in just eight days of lockdown, barely 10 days from when the first case was notified.”
For at least two weeks, restrictions on exiting the city and meetings will be in effect.
Authorities in Cairns, Australia’s northernmost city, have imposed a three-day lockdown after a cab driver infected the 150,000-strong community for ten days.
They will join the millions of people who have been ordered to stay at home in Melbourne and Sydney, which is about to enter its seventh week of lockdown.
The state of Additional South Wales reported 262 new cases on Sunday, bringing the total number of illnesses in the outbreak, which began in Sydney in mid-June, to over 5,000.
Gladys Berejiklian, the state’s premier, urged Sydney citizens to get vaccinated, with supermarket and fast-food workers getting first attention in a new vaccination blitz on Sunday.
“This is a competition. We’re eager to get those immunization rates up as quickly as possible “she stated
Limited vaccine supplies and pockets of vaccine hesitancy have hampered vaccination efforts in Australia, with just about 20% of the population now completely vaccinated.
With the Moderna vaccine arriving for the first time and Pfizer imports likely to grow, health officials expect supplies to be enhanced in September.
For the past 18 months, Australia has avoided the worst of the pandemic, but lockdowns have struggled to prevent breakouts of the highly infectious Delta form.
In a population of 25 million people, roughly 36,000 instances of Covid-19 have been reported, with 935 deaths as a result.
