Australia tightens social restrictions amid increased coronavirus infections in Sydney

The authorities of Australia increased the social restriction measures this Friday on the already confined city of Sydney, the second most populated, after detecting a new record of daily infections of covid-19 with the highly contagious delta variant.

”There are 44 cases of community transmission. Unfortunately 29 of them were, totally or partially in the community, and this figure is really worrying for New South Wales where we want to have zero local infections”, the head of the state government, Gladys Berejiklian, told reporters in Sydney.

Today’s figure represents a new daily record for local broadcasting in New south Wales, that since it was detected in mid-June that a driver of an international crew contracted the delta variant, accumulates around 450 infections, while the number of close contacts doubled from last night to 14,000.

To face “the greatest challenge since the beginning of the pandemic”, Berejiklian announced that since the afternoon of this Friday the number of people who can exercise outdoors has been reduced from ten to two, except for members of a household , and within a radius of ten kilometers from the place of residence.

It was also recommended that one person in a household make essential purchases and funerals were limited to a maximum of ten attendees in the confined areas of the greater Sydney area, and the surrounding communities, where six of the more than 25 million live of inhabitants of Australia.

Some 28 infections reported this Friday correspond to the neighborhoods of the southwest and west of Sydney, which has a strong presence of immigrants whose mother tongue is not English and who perform essential tasks.

To monitor compliance with the restriction and confinement measures, the NSW Police deployed some 200 officers to patrol the streets of southwest Sydney, a city that has been confined from June 26 to July 16 and is facing a new extension of mass quarantine.

Australia, where the sprouts of covid-19 are attributed to the leakage of the virus from quarantine centers to the community, accumulates more than 30,950 cases, including 910 deaths, and has vaccinated 8.8 million people, although less than 10 percent with the full Pfizer guideline or AstraZeneca.

The Australian government, which was praised for its economic and health management of the pandemic, faces severe delays in the schedule it established to vaccinate the entire population, due to delays in imports and local distribution, little diversity in its portfolio, and changes in guidelines for side effects.