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 Sydney locked down for third week
The leader of Australia's New South Wales (NSW) state on Wednesday
ordered a week-long extension of Sydney's COVID-19 lockdown, warning
new cases are bound to rise as the country's biggest city grapples
with the highly infectious Delta variant. Total infections have
topped 350 since the first case, a limousine driver who transported
overseas airline crew, was detected three weeks ago in the beachside
suburb of Bondi.
While other developed nations have pressed ahead with vaccinating a
large portion of their population, fewer than 10% of Australians
have been fully vaccinated so far.
South Korea considers reimposing restrictions as cases surge
South Korea reported its second highest number of daily new COVID-19
cases ever on Wednesday, just days after it began easing social
distancing restrictions in some parts of the country, buoyed by an
accelerated vaccine rollout.
With the majority of the 1,212 new cases coming from densely
populated Seoul, officials extended movement curbs in the capital
and surrounding regions for at least another week and are
considering pushing restrictions back up to the highest level. Prime
Minister Kim Boo-kyum said the country's fourth wave of the virus,
fuelled by the highly contagious Delta variant, was spreading
rapidly, especially among unvaccinated people in their 20s and 30s.
Singapore not counting Sinovac shots in vaccination tally
Singapore has excluded those who received Sinovac Biotech's shots
from its national COVID-19 vaccination count, according to the
city-state's health ministry. Just over 17,000 people in Singapore
have received one dose of CoronaVac as of July 3. These records will
be captured in a national immunisation registry.
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 Sinovac's CoronaVac shot is not
part of Singapore's national vaccination
programme and the city-state has said it is
still awaiting critical data from the company.
"COVID-19 vaccines that are not part of our
national vaccination programme may not have
documented sufficient data on their protection
against COVID-19 infection, especially against
the Delta variant that is currently
circulating," the health ministry said last
week.
Mass-testing reduced Liverpool cases by a fifth,
study finds A mass rapid-testing
scheme reduced COVID-19 cases in the English city of Liverpool by
more than a fifth, researchers said on Wednesday, arguing it was an
effective public health intervention despite concerns over accuracy
of the devices. The community testing pilot scheme launched in
November, and offered everyone in the city tests whether or not they
had symptoms, in an attempt to find a new way to use testing to
limit the spread of the coronavirus.
The study, led by the University of Liverpool with government
backing, concluded that community testing led to an 18% increase in
case detection and a 21% reduction in cases compared with other
areas up to mid-December. Biden zeroes in on Delta
variant
U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday encouraged Americans who have
not yet been vaccinated against COVID-19 to get their shots to
protect themselves from the widely-spreading, highly contagious
Delta variant of the coronavirus.
The Delta variant, which is becoming dominant in many countries, is
more easily transmitted than earlier versions of the coronavirus and
may cause more severe disease, especially among younger people. It
has now been found in every U.S. state, health officials have said.
(Compiled by Karishma Singh; Editing by Michael Perry)
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