Australia lifts lockdown in Brisbane while Sydney outbreak grows

Sydney, Australia, 3 Jul (EFE).- The authorities in Australia announced Saturday the end of lockdown in Brisbane, while the outbreak continues to rise in Sydney, the country’s most populous city.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the exceptional measure decreed last weekend over Brisbane, a city of with 2.28 million inhabitants, concludes Saturday after a 24-hour extension.

The head of the regional government said the decision was taken after no fresh coronavirus infections were detected in the city for the past five days.

Australia, in a bid to completely eliminate Covid-19 from the country, adopts brief but often strict measures to check infections, often interrupting the relative normalcy in which the people there live their lives.

However, the outbreak in Sydney, home to more than 20 percent of Australia’s 25 million people, continues to rise with 35 fresh cases reported Saturday, the highest daily number this year so far.

However, New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian stressed that the lockdown in Sydney that began a week ago is having the “desired effect” of curbing the recent outbreak linked to Covid-19’s Delta variant.

“While the number of cases are going up, we are seeing a greater proportion of those in isolation which is what we want to see,” Berejiklian said at a press conference.

Australia has recorded a total of nearly 30,700 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 910 deaths since the start of the pandemic.

Meanwhile, the country has vaccinated more than 30 percent of its population with the first dose, while only 6 percent have been administered both doses required to complete immunization. EFE

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