Police arrest hundreds of protesters as Australia reports record
COVID-19 cases
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[August 21, 2021]
By Lidia Kelly
MELBOURNE (Reuters) -Australian police
arrested hundreds of anti-lockdown protesters in Melbourne and Sydney on
Saturday and seven officers were hospitalised as a result of clashes, as
the country saw its highest ever single-day rise in COVID-19 cases.
Mounted police used pepper spray in Melbourne to break up crowds of more
than 4,000 surging toward police lines, while smaller groups of
protesters were prevented from congregating in Sydney by a large
contingent of riot police.
Victoria state police said that they arrested 218 people in the state
capital Melbourne. They issued 236 fines and kept three people in
custody for assaulting police. The arrested people face fines of A$5,452
($3,900) each for breaching public health orders.
Police in New South Wales, where Sydney is the capital, said they
charged 47 people with breaching public health orders or resisting
arrest, among other offences, and issued more than 260 fines ranging
from A$50 ($35) to $3,000. The police said about 250 people made it to
the city for the protest.
Sydney, Australia's biggest city with more than 5 million people, has
been in a strict lockdown https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/sydney-covid-19-lockdown-be-extended-until-sept-end-2021-08-20
for more than two months, failing to contain an outbreak that has spread
across internal borders and as far as neighbouring New Zealand.
The vast majority of the 894 cases reported across Australia on Saturday
were found in Sydney, the epicentre of the Delta variant-fuelled
outbreak.
"We are in a very serious situation here in New South Wales," said state
Health Minister Brad Hazzard. "There is no time now to be selfish, it's
time to think of the broader community and your families."
Police patrolled Sydney's streets and blocked private and public
transport into the city centre to reduce the number of people gathering
at an unauthorised protest.
In Melbourne, the country's second-most populous city, a large crowd
managed to march and some clashed with police, after state Premier
Daniel Andrews expanded a city lockdown to the entire state.
Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Shane Patton had earlier warned
people to stay away from the protest, adding it was "just ridiculous to
think that people would be so selfish and come and do this."
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Anti-lockdown protesters clashed with police in Melbourne on
Saturday as the country reported a record high daily number
of new COVID-19 infections.
Several hundred people also protested peacefully in
Brisbane, which is not in lockdown.
Just 7% of Australians support the often-violent protests, according
to a late-July poll by market research firm Utting Research.
Compliance with public health rules has been one of the key cited
reasons behind Australia's success, relative to other rich
countries, in managing the pandemic. But the country has been
struggling to rein in the third wave of infections that began in
Sydney in mid-June.
Australia has had about 43,000 COVID-19 cases and 978 deaths. But
while those numbers are low, only about a third of Australians aged
16 and above have been fully vaccinated, according to federal health
ministry data released on Saturday.
New South Wales officials reported three deaths and 516 people in
hospital on Saturday. Of the 85 people in intensive care, 76 were
unvaccinated, officials said.
At least 96 people were active in the community during their
infectious period, and there were a number of breaches of public
health orders, all slowing the efforts to curtail the outbreak.
In Victoria, at least 39 people were active in the community while
infectious. Eighteen people were in hospital, eight in intensive
care and six on ventilators.
($1 = 1.4017 Australian dollars)
(Reporting by Lidia Kelly; Editing by Will Dunham, Jane Wardell and
William Mallard)
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