Australia’s largest city, Sydney, has deployed about 300 of the country’s armed forces personnel to help with a Covid-19 lockdown as the country faces a rise in cases attributed to the Delta variant. While the severity of Covid cases and deaths in Australia has been much milder than that in some other advanced countries, its pandemic response has been seen to flounder when it comes to vaccinations. Here’s a look at how infections are progressing Down Under and when the country proposes to remove curbs.
How Many Daily Cases Is Australia Adding?
Total cases recorded in the country of about 25.5 million people so far during the pandemic stands at a little over 34,000 while cumulative deaths till July 31 numbered 924. Which means that the country has seen about 1,400 cases for every 1 million people, far lower than the likes of UK (87,000 cases for every 1 million people), or the US (105,000 cases) or even India (22,900 cases per million people).
But daily new cases in the province of New South Wales, which is home to Sydney, have continued to hover around a 16-month high recorded late last week, reports say. On Monday, it had counted 207 new infections in the past 24 hours. The country’s third-largest city, Brisbane, has extended its lockdown till coming Sunday after Queensland, the province it is part, detected 13 new locally acquired Covid-19 cases in the past 24 hours, which is the biggest one-day rise recorded in a year. The lockdown in Brisbane was due to have ended on August 3.
Meanwhile, the state of Victoria eased its lockdown on July 27 although some restrictions are still in place.
New South Wales has reportedly seen more than 3,500 new cases during the latest outbreak, which began in June and was traced to a limousine driver in Sydney who was infected while transporting an overseas airline crew.
What Is The Severity Of The Restrictions?
The lockdown in Sydney has now entered its sixth week and the army has been called in to aid in monitoring compliance with stay-at-home orders. In the early days of the pandemic, sealing of international borders and strict lockdowns were seen as having helped Australia to keep its case load under control. However, the Delta variant — which emerged in India last year — has proven to be tricky and is seen as being able to spread more quickly. The variant is being blamed for fresh surges across countries.
Australia’s Covid graph shows distinct spikes that marks out each new wave. At the end of March last year, the country was recording more than 300 daily cases, though the tally had dropped to the 10s and 20s by the end of April, staying that way till mid June. By the end of July, the country was again recording more than 400 cases and hit a peak of 551 cases (7-day rolling average) on August 4, 2020. Thereafter, daily cases again dropped below 100 by early September and had stayed that till mid-July this year. On August 1 this year, the country recorded close to 220 new infections, most of them concentrated in New South Wales.
BBC reported that the lockdown in Sydney is to continue “until at least August 28" with curbs on people leaving their homes except for essential work. Meanwhile, the soldiers have been brought in to ensure compliance with the restrictions in the city’s Covid-19 hotspots even as health officials are said to have suggested that the “virus is mainly spreading through permitted movement".
What’s The Vaccination Status?
The government of Prime Minister Scott Morrison has faced flak for the slow rollout of the country’s Covid-19 vaccination programme at a time when several countries have gone ahead with reopening plans after delivering jabs to large proportions of their population.
As of August 1, only 15 per cent of the eligible people in the country had received their full course of vaccination while the proportion of those who had got at least one dose was at 33 per cent. In comparison, more than 49 per cent of people in the US and over 56 per cent of the UK’s population had received their full doses.
PM Morrison is said to have announced that lockdowns would be “less likely" when 70 per cent of Australians aged over 16 years of age have been inoculated against the novel coronavirus. Reports said that “Morrison expects to hit the 70 per cent mark by the end of the year". The country is primarily using the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine — which is being used in India under the name Covishield — and the Pfizer mRNA shot and Morrison has blamed supply constraints, among other things, for the slow vaccine rollout.
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