10mn Australians go into lockdown
Fears of Delta variant of Covid-19 forces the govt to impose strict restrictions in Brisbane, Sydney, Perth and Darwin
BRISBANE: More than 10 million Australians have been ordered into lockdown as coronavirus cases spread across the country, and Brisbane on Tuesday became the fourth major city to issue stay-at-home orders.
The three-day snap lockdown for Brisbane, starting on Tuesday evening, comes on top of similar measures imposed in Sydney, Perth and Darwin in recent days.
“These are tough decisions,” Queensland state premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said, after Australia recorded 23 virus cases in 24 hours.
Australia is now battling flareups of the highly contagious Delta variant - which first emerged in India - as public anger grows at the slow pace of vaccinations. Less than 5% of adults are believed to have received both vaccine doses.
As well as Brisbane, surrounding coastal regions and the small northern city of Townsville are also subject to the latest order, after an unvaccinated hospital worker spent up to 10 days travelling around Queensland while infectious.
On Tuesday morning, Perth residents woke to a four-day snap lockdown after a local cluster grew to three cases.
The largest outbreak is in Sydney,
where 150 people have tested positive for Covid-19 since mid-June, with the city’s residents now under stay-at-home orders for two weeks.
A small cluster linked to an outback gold mine sent Darwin into lockdown after exposure sites were found for the first time in the northern city, which is home to a large indigenous population feared to be more vulnerable to Covid-19.
New Zealand said on Tuesday it would partially reopen its travel bubble with Australia from July 5, but only with states that have not recorded any cases.
More than three billion Covid-19 vaccines have been administered around the world, an AFP tally found on Tuesday, as countries race to contain the virulent Delta variant that is fuelling outbreaks all over the globe.
According to the tally, highincome countries as defined by the World Bank have administered an average of 79 doses per 100 inhabitants, with the UAE, Bahrain and Israel taking the lead. In low-income nations, the figure is one shot per 100 people.
On Tuesday, foreign ministers from the Group of 20 major economies stressed the need for greater global cooperation in the face of the pandemic.
“Multilateral cooperation will be key to our collective ability to stop this global health crisis,” US secretary of state Antony Blinken told the ministers in the ancient Italian city of Matera.
In Russia, which recorded its highest daily death toll on Tuesday, officials have introduced mandatory shots for some groups of citizens. The country reported 652 fatalities over the past 24 hours, with a recordhigh number of daily deaths - 119 - in Saint Petersburg, which is due to host a Euro 2020 quarterfinal on Friday.