Sharjah24 – Reuters: The COVID-19 Delta outbreak in Australia's biggest city Sydney grew by 239 cases on Thursday, the highest daily rise since the pandemic started, forcing authorities to increase police powers to shut down businesses not complying with lockdown measures.
More than two million residents in eight Sydney hotspots will now be forced to wear masks outdoors and must stay within 5 km (3 miles) of their homes.
Sydney is in its fifth week of an extended nine-week lockdown, which is scheduled to end August 28, but the spread of the highly transmissible Delta variant continues to grow.
"It only takes a handful of people, or a small percentage, to do the wrong thing, to cause a setback for all of us. We can't afford setbacks," state Premier Gladys Berejiklian told reporters in Sydney.
Most new locally acquired cases were detected in Sydney, with at least 66 having spent time in the community while infectious. Authorities have said Sydney's lockdown will not ease until cases in the community are near zero.
New South Wales reported a total of 177 cases a day earlier.
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