Australia’s largest city Sydney entered a two-week lockdown on Saturday to contain a sudden Covid surge and Russia’s St Petersburg announced a record death toll marking a global spread of the highly contagious Delta variant.
Bangladesh announced that it would impose a new national lockdown from Monday over the variant, with offices shut for a week and only medical-related transport allowed.
Sydney’s normally bustling harbourside centre was nearly deserted after people were ordered to stay home except for essential trips. New Zealand, citing “multiple outbreaks” in Australia, announced a three-day suspension of its quarantine-free travel arrangement with its larger neighbour. Sydney’s new restrictions apply to some five million people, along with hundreds of thousands of others living in nearby towns.
South Africa’s acting health minister said the Delta coronavirus variant is dominant in the country, fuelling a third wave of infections that may prompt the government to tighten lockdown restrictions further.
Acting health minister Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane told the news conference it was now likely that the peak of the third wave would surpass that of the second wave in January, when more than 21,000 new daily cases were recorded.
Russia’s Euro 2020 host St Petersburg on Saturday reported the country’s highest daily Covid-19 death toll for a city since the start of the pandemic.
Official figures said the city, which has already hosted six Euro 2020 matches and is due to host a quarter-final next Friday, recorded 107 virus deaths over the last 24 hours. Russia has seen an explosion of new cases since mid-June, driven by the Delta variant, which has now spread to Europe.
