Sydney’s poorest neighborhoods yesterday braced for military enforcement of the city’s toughest and longest lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic, as the infection numbers held persistently high five weeks since restrictions began.
With the city of 5 million people ordered to stay home amid an outbreak of the highly transmissible Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, authorities outlined even tighter restrictions for the worst affected suburbs, including mandatory testing and mask-wearing outdoors.
From Monday, about 300 Australian army personnel would help police door-knock people who have tested positive to the virus to ensure they are isolating, New South Wales Police Commissioner Mick Fuller told a televised news conference.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“The sheer volume of increase over the last week [means] the level of compliance [enforcement] has gone from hundreds into thousands,” he said.
The amped-up military and police presence would cover the breadth of Australia’s largest city, but mainly eight local government districts in the city’s west — home to 2 million people — where most new cases have been reported.
As the city entered its sixth week of a planned nine-week lockdown, New South Wales state reported 170 new local cases, most in the state capital, Sydney, down from a record 239 a day earlier. Of the new cases, at least 42 spent time in the community while infectious.
While new cases fell, New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian said that the high number of infectious people in the community meant that “we are expecting to see those numbers bounce around.”
At the same news conference, New South Wales Minister of Health Brad Hazzard said that people were waiting too long to be tested after developing symptoms, and that “we are seeing more families coming in with a family member who is presenting not alive but dead.”
While some people in migrant communities might be distrustful of government, “we are here to support you and our health system is here to support you,” he added.
Since the outbreak began with an unmasked, unvaccinated airport driver last month, New South Wales has reported 13 deaths, taking the national total to 923 since the pandemic began.
The epicenter of the outbreak has crossed Sydney from the affluent beachside suburb of Bondi to the western suburbs, where local leaders said that residents felt unfairly targeted by the heightened enforcement.
“They’ve got no other ideas than to bring in the military as a last resort because they’re lost for answers on issues they created,” said Steve Christou, mayor of the Cumberland local government area, where 60 percent of its 240,000 residents were born overseas.
“They are a poor community, they are a vulnerable community, and they don’t deserve these lockdowns or these extended and harsh measures that they have now been targeted with,” he added in a telephone interview.
People living in the western suburbs must stay within 5km of home and have a virus test every three days to be allowed to do essential work outside the area.
Already police have been given sweeping new powers to close businesses breaking rules.
Military officers would not be armed and would be under police command, Fuller said.
They would also aim to work with community leaders on enforcement strategies, he said.
An emergency COVID-19 cabinet of state and federal leaders began a regular meeting yesterday, with plans to discuss exit strategies from the pandemic — widely expected to center around getting more people vaccinated.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not