The Sydney Home Order has been in force for two weeks now, with authorities trying to curb the spread of the new Indian or delta variant of the coronavirus. It has now been extended until July 16.
New South Wales officials have acknowledged that progress has been made, but that quarantine needs to be continued, allowing Sydney residents to leave their homes for work, shopping or sports.
“This type of delta (..) is very contagious,” said New South Wales Prime Minister Gledis Beredikljan, saying it must be eradicated from Sydney.
“We don’t want to be in a situation where we have to constantly switch between quarantine, non-quarantine, quarantine, non-quarantine.”
The prime minister said extending the quarantine is “the best way to ensure that this is our only quarantine until the majority of our citizens are vaccinated.”
Australia’s “zero-covenant” approach has led to quarantines in various cities in the country, but international borders have been closed for the past 15 months. This allowed Australians to live relatively normally in a pandemic, avoiding a large number of deaths.
More than 30,000 infections and 910 deaths have been reported in Australia since the start of the pandemic.
The Sydney outbreak has so far identified 357 cases of infection.
Australia’s reopening to the world is hampered by slow vaccination against Covid-19, which has vaccinated less than eight percent of the country’s population.
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