Australian authorities on Thursday have asked citizens to “brace” themselves for more Covid-19 cases in the coming days as the country’s most populous city of Sydney was experiencing its worst day in the number of daily cases.
The state of New South Wales (NSW) with Sydney as the capital city recorded 124 new community cases in the last 24 hours, reports Xinhua news agency.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian expressed her concern over the number of cases not in isolation, saying she expected case numbers to grow over the coming days.
“We anticipate case numbers will continue to go up before they start coming down and we need to brace ourselves for that,” she said.
With case numbers yet to reach a peak, hopes that Sydney will exit its lockdown on July 30 as planned are slimming.
Berejiklian said health authorities will be able to give an update on the future of Sydney’s lockdown late next week.
“We’ll be living with some level of restriction. Obviously we want it to be less than we have today until the majority of the population is vaccinated.”
Currently, just over 11 per cent of NSW citizens have been fully vaccinated, according to data from local news outlet the Sydney Morning Herald.
NSW also logged an all-time record of 85,185 tests in the 24 hours.
The state of Victoria recorded 26 new local cases on Thursday as the state of South Australia recorded two.
Facing the climbing number of community cases in eastern states, Western Australia announced on Thursday that it had brought down a hard border with SA, as it has already done with NSW and Victoria.
The restriction means only exempted travellers from select professions are allowed to travel there.
Queensland also announced to close its borders to the whole of NSW from 1 a.m. on Friday after a number of areas in regional NSW entered into lockdown earlier this week.