Australia has tightened lockdown restrictions after New South Wales suffered the worst day of the pandemic so far, with seven deaths reported.
New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state and home to the largest city Sydney, had 478 new infections on Monday.
The state premier Gladys Berejiklian blamed the rise in cases on younger Australians flouting the rules and hosting house parties.
Two of the dead had received a single dose of vaccine and the rest were unvaccinated, Berejiklian said, adding that lockdown measures could remain until at least 80 per cent of people were fully vaccinated.
A 15-year-old boy, who was in hospital being treated for pneumococcal meningitis and was diagnosed with Covid, has also died.
People aged 16-to-39 in Sydney’s worst-affected suburbs will be targeted with 530,000 newly imported Pfizer vaccines from Poland, the government said.
Berejiklian blamed Sydney residents’ failure to comply with the city’s lockdown restrictions and stay-at-home orders for the escalating infections.
“The case numbers are disturbingly high and we are...at a fork in the road,” Berejiklian said.
“The most important thing is for people to stay at home. Don’t leave home unless you have to. It is frustrating. Every day when we get examples of a handful of people doing the wrong thing: having parties or having gatherings they shouldn’t be having or leaving the house when they have got symptoms and they haven’t been tested,” Berejiklian said.
“They’re not a lot of examples but only four or five across the population causes enormous grief.”
Melbourne reported 22 new infections on Monday. A lockdown that was due to end on Thursday was extended to September 2 with a 9pm to 5am curfew beginning on Tuesday.
Tougher restrictions include a ban on people removing face masks to drink alcohol in public. This followed a “Walk. Talk. Sip” event advertised on social media that encouraged people to stroll from pub to pub in the suburb of Richmond with takeout drinks over the weekend.
“We’ve seen people turning the footpath into an impromptu beer garden and doing pub crawls,” State Premier Daniel Andrews said. “We’ve seen lots of people flouting these rules, not doing as they should, making really poor choices.”
