Coronavirus latest: NHS vaccine for the ‘grab-a-jab’ campaign

Residents of Sydney’s wealthiest neighborhoods, around Bondi beach, will be closed for at least another week as Covid-19 unfolds in Australia’s busiest city.

The state health department revealed on Friday that it had reported 11 locally acquired cases overnight in New South Wales a day earlier from 24 hours to 8pm after 11 infections.

NSW Health said 65 cases were linked to a Bondi cluster. Authorities said earlier that the latest outbreak, which indicates the first infections in the state in more than a month, was linked to a driver carrying foreign airline crews and visited several places in Sydney, including a Bondi shopping center.

This has prompted the state to reintroduce the wearing of masks in internal situations, but the leader also raises a broader policy issue, with Australia being one of the least integrated populations in the world.

Those living in the workplace or a regular workplace would receive orders to stay home in central Sydney and parts of affluent eastern neighborhoods until midnight on July 2, NSW Prime Minister Gladys Berejiklian said on Friday.

These include the Waverley council, which includes Bondi, as well as Woollahra, Randwick and Sydney councils.

Affected residents may leave their home alone for essential activities or services. Many other areas of the city are already blocked and residents are barred from leaving the Sydney metropolis for non-essential reasons.

NSW, a state of nearly 8.2 million people (more than 5.3m of whom live in Sydney), has confirmed 5,507 cases of coronavirus since the start of the pandemic and 56 related deaths. New Zealand this week paused the travel bubble with the state, as passengers were exempted from making the hotel’s mandatory quarantine.

Although Australia was one of the countries where the outbreaks of coronavirus last year were small and controlled, vaccination has been slow.

Only 4.4 percent of the population is fully vaccinated, according to FT tracker, At a time when more transmissive variants of Covid-19 are spreading around the world.