Worse is yet to come

Sydney's Delta outbreak has not peaked and residents must brace for more deaths, authorities said yesterday, as Australia's largest city continued to break records for new daily infections despite a nearly two-month lockdown.

"We haven't seen the worst of it and the way that we stop this is by everybody staying at home," New South Wales (NSW) Premier Gladys Berejiklian told reporters in Sydney, the state capital.

NSW reported its biggest daily rise of 633 new cases, including 545 in Sydney, eclipsing the state's previous daily high of 478 hit on Monday. Sixty people have died since the first Delta case was reported in Sydney on June 16, including three confirmed yesterday.

Australia is in the grip of a third wave of infections that has exposed weaknesses in the country's vaccine rollout and forced more than half of its 25 million people into lockdown.

New Zealand's city streets were largely deserted yesterday as the country returned to life in lockdown for the first time in six months in a bid to halt any spread of the infectious Delta variant. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the rapid rise, taking the total number of cases to 10, justified her decision to issue nationwide stay-at-home orders Tuesday when just one case had been identified.

The US reported more than 1,000 Covid-19 deaths on Tuesday, equating to around 42 fatalities an hour, according to a Reuters tally, as the Delta variant continues to ravage parts of the country with low vaccination rates.