KONTAN.CO.ID – SYDNEY. Sydney’s COVID-19 cases set a new daily record on Wednesday (24 August), putting parts of the health system under “severe stress”.
Despite two months of lockdown, the State of New South Wales (NSW) reported 919 new cases amid the Delta variant outbreak, bringing Australia’s daily total cases to a new record high of just under 1,000.
A total of 113 people in the State of NSW are in intensive care, with 98 of whom have not been vaccinated.
“This highlights the fact that vaccination is key. We need to increase vaccine coverage rates,” NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant was quoted as saying. Reuters.
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Australia, grappling to control a third wave of the coronavirus, has locked down more than half of its 25 million people, including its biggest cities, Sydney and Melbourne, and accelerated an initially slow launch of a vaccine.
Around 31% of Australians over the age of 16 have been fully vaccinated, while 54% have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
“We’ve made it clear that the most important figure moving forward is vaccination rates and that’s still the case,” NSW Prime Minister Gladys Berejiklian told reporters in Sydney, the state capital.
“There is no doubt that part of the hospital network is under heavy pressure when most of the cases, 80% of cases are from the same area,” he added, pointing to the high number of cases in Sydney’s Southwest suburbs.
Despite the recent Delta outbreak, the number of COVID-19 infections in the land of kangaroos is still relatively low, with more than 46,600 cases and 986 deaths. Deaths from the latest outbreak were 76.
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