![]() ![]() The federal JobKeeper wage subsidy was ended in March. Many retail outlets are continuing their operations, while factory workers remain on the job, as they have throughout the pandemic. Beyond that, clarity urgently required about lockdown rules.” Without JobKeeper support, some workers have to work despite risks. On Twitter yesterday, Professor Bill Bowtell noted: “What’s happening in Sydney is not a hard lockdown. With hundreds of potential exposure sites across Sydney, health experts have warned that the limited lockdown now in place may be insufficient to stem infections. Since then, daily infections have continued to approach or exceed 20. Amid mounting cases, Berejiklian announced a lockdown covering all of Sydney on Saturday. On Friday, the NSW government announced stay-at-home restrictions for four local government areas, but infections were already being detected elsewhere.Įpidemiologists denounced the shambolic measure and correctly noted that it was dictated by the demands of large businesses that their operations not be hindered by a city-wide lockdown. This allowed Delta to circulate, extending from the city’s eastern suburbs to every corner of the city. ![]() AUSTRALIA LOCKDOWN 2021 FULLThey are all of the Delta variant and are in or near Sydney, the country’s most-populous city.įor over a week, the Berejiklian government, with the full support of the state Labor opposition, rejected demands from epidemiologists for a lockdown. This takes the total number of locally-acquired cases since June 16 to 171. NSW authorities this morning reported 22 infections in the 24 hours to 8 p.m. Over recent days, demands for the resignation of Prime Minister Scott Morrison and denunciations of state leaders, particularly New South Wales (NSW) Premier Gladys Berejiklian, have developed on Australian social media platforms. Governments fear the public backlash, under conditions in which their political survival over the past year has largely depended on false claims to have protected the population from the coronavirus disasters witnessed internationally. The high transmissibility of the Delta variant, which is twice as contagious as the original version of the disease, and widespread public anger over the government failures, have prompted the current lockdowns. Governments have, throughout the pandemic, failed to develop an effective quarantine program, instead relying on private hotels that are incapable of stemming airborne transmission and have been the source of up to 30 COVID “leaks.” Australia has the slowest vaccination rate of an advanced OECD country, with only around 7 percent of the adult population fully-inoculated. Prior to the current outbreaks, almost all safety measures, including caps on mass events, had been lifted. ![]() The governments have been compelled to impose restrictions, however, because Labor and Liberal-National administrations at the state and federal levels have created what some epidemiologists have termed a “perfect storm” for a major surge of the disease. Infection numbers remain relatively low, in the dozens each day in Sydney, where the current swell began, and single figures in several other cities. ![]() Since Saturday, four state and territory governments have initiated limited lockdown measures, covering up to 12 million people, or almost half Australia’s population, as outbreaks of the highly-contagious Delta variant of COVID-19 spread across the country. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |