Sydney’s delta variant outbreak grows, rising cases in community stoke worries

Australia’s New South Wales (NSW) state authorities said they were still finding a significant number of new Covid-19 cases in the community, raising worries of fresh clusters as it reported a rise in new infections for the third day in a row. Half of Thursday’s total 24 cases were detected in the community, while the others infected were already in home quarantine, officials said, as Sydney nears a week of a hard lockdown put in place to contain an outbreak of the highly infectious delta variant. ″(This) is a cause of concern. That is what we will be looking at in the next few days and beyond as a measure of our success,” NSW state premier Gladys Berejiklian told reporters in Sydney. Australia is battling a flare-up of infections simultaneously in several states for the first time this year with nearly half of all Australians under a stay-at-home order to prevent any significant outbreak of the delta strain. Sydney, Perth, Brisbane and Darwin imposed lockdowns in the last few days to counter the fast-moving variant after months in which Australia had nearly eliminated the virus. The town of Alice Springs, gateway to UNESCO World Heritage-listed Uluru, on Wednesday joined others after an infected traveler spent hours in the city’s airport.<br/>