State officials in Australia are sending in 200 more army personnel to Sydney after the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak there spreads to the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), causing one case and ushering a snap lockdown. The outbreak in Sydney is getting worse, and the only thing the government of New South Wales thinks will help is to place more areas of the city under lockdown.
On Thursday, Aug. 12, New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian placed three more Sydney neighborhoods under strict lockdown. Berejiklian attempted to argue that extreme measures are necessary even though some of the areas under lockdown only reported one additional COVID-19 case. The premier is also ignoring the fact that the lockdowns have not prevented the spread of the outbreak. (Related: Western governments exploit COVID as an excuse for tyranny as Australia mobilizes troops to enforce virus lockdown.)
"Unfortunately, this trend [in cases] will continue for at least the next few days," said Berejiklian in a press conference.
New South Wales reported 390 new locally acquired cases on Friday. Most of these cases came from Sydney. This is a small rise from the previous daily high of 356 new COVID-19 cases recorded on Tuesday. Two new deaths were also recorded, taking the total number of deaths in this latest post-vaccine outbreak in New South Wales to 38.
Sydney originally planned to end its nine-week-long lockdown by Aug. 28. State officials are now warning that this is unlikely. But they said they might begin to ease certain restrictions if new cases fall and if enough people get the experimental and side effect-riddled COVID-19 vaccines.
Instead of relaxing lockdown restrictions, New South Wales will instead send in hundreds more Australian Defence Forces personnel to Sydney. The defense department confirmed on Friday that it received a request for extra personnel to support the New South Wales Police Force's efforts to keep people in their homes in the locked-down neighborhoods of Sydney.
"Defence is preparing to deploy an additional 200 personnel commencing Monday … to assist NSW police force," said a defense department spokesperson.
This will boost the number of army personnel already enforcing the Sydney lockdown up to more than 700.
Along with enforcing home quarantine, the army personnel will patrol the locked-down neighborhoods of Sydney. They will knock on people's homes to ensure compliance with health orders. They will also monitor compliance activities at quarantine hotels and airports.
Australian Capital Territory enters lockdown after one COVID-19 case
The post-vaccine outbreak in New South Wales has also been linked to the first local COVID-19 case in the ACT in more than a year. The patient was discovered on Thursday and is described as a man in his 20s. The last recorded case in the territory was on July 10 last year.
The entire city of Canberra in the ACT was forced into lockdown after finding the one case. The ACT comprises just Canberra, with its population of 430,000, and two other villages. ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr of the left-wing Labor Party called the appearance of this one COVID-19 case "the most serious public health risk" the territory has faced in a year. He said the lockdown will stay in place until all new COVID-19 cases in the territory are found and those people are placed in isolation throughout the entirety of their infectious periods.
"We would want to see no additional community transmission, we want to go back to zero," he said.
The sudden lockdown resulted in the closure of all schools in the territory. Exceptions were given to the children of essential workers. Teachers in the territory were also told to prepare to switch to online learning. The day after the one case was isolated and the territory went into lockdown, the total number of COVID-19 cases in Canberra rose to six.
Three of the additional COVID-19 cases were close contacts of the first post-vaccine case. Barr said around 3,900 people in the territory have already been identified as close or casual contacts of the infected individuals thanks to the use of an invasive contact tracing app.
The chief minister added that the amount of close contacts and exposure sites is likely to increase, paving the way for the lockdown in the territory to be extended.
Learn more about the extreme and repressive lockdown in Australia by reading the latest articles at Pandemic.news.
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