Australia's largest cities remain under lockdown, report slight dip in COVID-19 cases

Record ID: 1627334

  • Title: Australia's largest cities remain under lockdown, report slight dip in COVID-19 cases
  • Date: 18th July 2021
  • Summary: SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA (RECENT) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF EMPTY CITY
  • Embargoed: 1st August 2021 06:44
  • Keywords: Australia COVID-19 Melbourne New South Wales Sydney Victoria cases cluster coronavirus lockdown outbreak pandemic testing
  • Location: SYDNEY, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA
  • City: SYDNEY, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA
  • Country: Australia
  • Topics: Asia / Pacific,Australia,Health/Medicine
  • Reuters ID: LVA001EMD89QF
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: Australia's two largest states on Sunday (July 18) reported slight declines in new COVID-19 infections, prompting authorities to say it could be days before tough lockdown measures showed progress in containing the spread of the Delta variant.
    The country's most populous city, Sydney, and all of Victoria state - totalling nearly half the country's 25 million population - are under stay-home orders after a flare-up of the highly infectious virus strain began last month. New South Wales (NSW) state, of which Sydney is the capital, reported 105 new cases in the previous day, down from 111 the day before, while Victoria logged 16 new cases, down from 19. NSW also recorded an additional death from the virus, taking the total to four since the start of the year and the national total to 914 since the pandemic began.
    A day earlier, state premier Gladys Berejiklian tightened restrictions on the city of five million people, including a shutdown of all building and property maintenance works and bans on some 600,000 people in the worst-affected suburbs from leaving their immediate neighbourhood for work.
    Neighbouring Victoria, with 7 million people under a five-day lockdown scheduled to end on Tuesday (July 20), said all 16 new cases were linked to known chains of transmission.
    (Production: James Redmayne)
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2021. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
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