Sharjah24 – Reuters: Australian authorities on Tuesday warned Sydney residents to brace for a surge in COVID-19 cases in the coming weeks, urging people to get vaccinated to avoid more hospitalisations and deaths as daily infections hovered near record levels.
"We envisage that case numbers in the next two or three weeks will bounce around and are likely to rise substantially," New South Wales (NSW) Premier Gladys Berejiklian told reporters in Sydney, the state capital.
Sydney, Australia's largest city and the epicentre of the country's outbreak, has toughened lockdown rules, including setting up roadblocks in parts of the city, and has hiked fines amid reports of people flouting strict stay-at-home orders.
But the strict curbs, now in their eighth week, have failed to rein in the Delta outbreak, with NSW on Tuesday reporting 452 cases - its third-biggest daily rise during the pandemic - and one new death.
A case was detected as far away as Broken Hill, a mining town more than 900 km (560 miles) northwest of Sydney deep in Australia's outback, as the virus spreads to more regional centres raising fears of wider outbreaks.
With no flattening of the curve in sight, the chances of restrictions ending on Aug. 28 in Sydney appears highly unlikely, with some economists predicting a second recession in Australia in as many years due to the lockdowns.
The highly infectious Delta strain has now plunged more than half of Australia's 25 million population under strict stay-at-home restrictions.
Sydney and Melbourne, its largest cities, and capital Canberra are in a weeks-long lockdown while a snap three-day lockdown was enforced on Monday in Darwin, the capital of the Northern Territory, after one new case.
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