With the delta variant now seeping around the country, more than half of Australia's 25M people are in lockdown, and a slow vaccination program has left many demanding to know what went wrong.
The state of New South Wales, of which Sydney is the capital, has gone from recording dozens of cases each day early in this outbreak to more than 800 cases and several deaths each day.
While this is dramatically less than in the United States — which is still recording upwards of 100,000 cases and hundreds of deaths each day — these numbers were unthinkable in Australia just weeks ago. "We have to accept that this is the worst situation New South Wales has been in since day one,” New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian recently told reporters. “And it's also, regrettably, because of that, the worst situation Australia's been in."
A near empty Sydney Opera House forecourt on Aug. 11. Sydney's lockdown, which was initially supposed to be two weeks, is now in its ninth week.Or as earlier put by the state's chief health officer, Kerry Chant, the delta strain isToole said delta"is twice as infectious as earlier strains, so it's obviously more challenging."
He's part of a group of health experts calling for even harsher lockdown measures to contain the more infectious variant — particularly in the outbreak epicenter of Sydney where cases keep rising — including closing far more businesses.
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