Coronavirus: Delta’s pall draped over three states

Australia has suffered its worst day dealing with the ­pandemic in a year as the Delta variant leaks across state borders.

Scott Morrison says ‘the primary tool to end the lockdown in Sydney is the success of the lockdown in Sydney’. Picture: Gary Ramage

Australia has suffered its worst day in dealing with the Covid-19 ­pandemic in a year, with NSW recording the nation’s highest number of deaths since last October, Victoria and Queensland gripped by mystery cases and the highly contagious Delta variant leaking across state borders.

More than 15 million people are under lockdown after Victoria joined NSW and Queensland by announcing a week of stay-at-home orders to ­suppress the ­expanding Delta outbreak.

The Victorian and Tasmanian governments held crisis meetings on Thursday after new Covid-19 cases emerged in the states, while NSW reported a record 262 daily infections and five deaths. Gladys Berejiklian extended Sydney’s lockdown to the Hunter and Upper Hunter regions to suppress transmissions.

Federal and state health officials are bracing for the situation to worsen in coming weeks.

National cabinet will meet for the 50th time on Friday to discuss the vaccine rollout and how millions of extra doses will be secured to reach at least 70 per cent vaccination coverage by December. Tensions flared ahead of the meeting with Scott Morrison on Thursday rebuking Ms Berejiklian for her claim that more vaccines would help end restrictions in her state. The Prime Minister said: “The virus doesn’t move by itself. The primary tool to end the lockdown in Sydney is the success of the lockdown in Sydney. People staying at home ensures that the virus doesn’t move.”

With more than 20 per cent of eligible Australians fully vaccinated, the federal government will send additional Pfizer vaccines to NSW and bring forward jabs for Queensland in response to the Brisbane outbreak.

Mr Morrison described the rising death toll in NSW as “dreadfully tragic” and said it was the job of governments to ensure people exited lockdowns that worked and to “get as many Australians vaccinated as soon as possible so we can get to 70 per cent”.

Premier Daniel Andrews announced Victoria’s sixth lockdown, saying ‘there is no alternative for us’. Picture: Getty Images

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews — in response to mystery infections and the exposure of as many as 10,000 close contacts to a case at Al-Taqwa College — announced the state would enter its sixth lockdown, just nine days after emerging from its fifth.

The seven-day lockdown, which includes the closure of schools, was ordered after Victoria recorded eight new infections, including two mystery cases.

Mr Andrews said the lockdown, which coincides with the one-year anniversary of Victoria’s second wave peaking at 725 cases, would be strictly enforced to avoid a repeat of last year’s mass outbreak. “The Delta variant moves so fast that, with even a handful of positive cases that can’t be linked, and that haven’t been in isolation throughout their infectious period, there is no alternative for us,” he said.

The Victorian lockdown came as Ms Berejiklian was forced to ­extend stay-at-home restrictions to eight local government areas in the NSW Hunter region, including Newcastle and Port Stephens, after five cases were ­detected in the area. The deaths in NSW marked the highest number of fatalities in a day nationwide since five died in Victoria on October 14 last year and equalled the most the state had recorded on any day since the pandemic began.

Tasmanian authorities were scrambling to “track and trace” the state’s first Covid-19 case in nine months, after an alleged law-breaking NSW resident brought the virus to Launceston.

The Tasmanian government cancelled Sunday’s Collingwood-Hawthorn AFL game, due to be held in Launceston, and shut its border to quarantine-free arrivals from Victoria for seven days. Further public health measures could be applied in coming days.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian was forced to ­extend stay-at-home restrictions to eight local government areas in the NSW Hunter region. Picture: Getty Images

Premier Peter Gutwein said: “It would not be the responsible thing to do to allow that (game) to go ahead at this stage, knowing that we’ll have a surge in testing and many of those results won’t be in by Sunday.”

The 31-year-old man at the centre of Tasmania’s Covid-19 scare travelled from Sydney to Launceston via Melbourne on Monday without a valid travel pass to enter Tasmania, where on arrival he was escorted into hotel quarantine. He left the Peppers Hotel on Wednesday, taking a taxi to Launceston Airport and flying home to Sydney, later receiving a positive result from a Covid-19 test taken while he was in Tasmania.

In another example of the virus leaking out of Sydney, NSW chief health officer Kerry Chant said she believed some people from greater Sydney had illegally attended a “gathering” on Blacksmith beach last week, which had been linked to cases in the Hunter region.

Mr Andrews said health ­authorities were investigating links between one of his state’s latest cases and a household involving people who had recently completed hotel quarantine in NSW before returning to Victoria on a “red zone” permit that required them to quarantine at home for a fortnight.

Mr Andrews appealed to Victorians who have “made the wrong choices” during the pandemic to “do the right thing”.

Key among Victoria’s latest cases is a teacher in her 20s who works at Al-Taqwa College in Melbourne’s west, where 113 students, staff and family members were infected during last year’s second wave.

The female teacher and her partner are believed to have been infectious at their respective workplaces as early as July 27. Authorities fear as many as 10,000 close contacts could be linked to Al-Taqwa alone, given about 2500 students and staff travel to the school from all over Melbourne.

In Queensland, health authorities raised hopes that stay-at-home restrictions in the state’s southeast could be lifted by Sunday, after only four of the state’s 16 new cases were infectious in the community. Queensland chief health officer Jeannette Young said the ­decreased risk of community exposure had increased chances the lockdown could end on Sunday, which she said would be the “quickest response to any cluster anywhere”.

Businesses are moving to quarantine their operations from breakouts, with Victorian fruit and vegetable processor SPC becoming the first Australian company to mandate vaccines for staff and visitors.

Mr Morrison said businesses would “have to make choices” in managing exposure to the virus.

“A business … at the end of the day will wear costs of having to do the clean-downs of facilities and the various other things that could happen as a result of an outbreak,” he said.

Mr Morrison said businesses who required employees and customers to be vaccinated would have to seek legal advice on their decisions.

National cabinet leaders are expected to discuss vaccine ­incentives that would drive the second phase of the national ­reopening plan and help ­Australia move above 80 per cent coverage.

Operation Covid Shield ­commander John Frewen and a national cabinet working group led by Victoria, the Northern ­Territory and Tasmania are looking at proposals around incentives and exemptions for vaccinated residents. Mr Morrison said they were assessing a range of options.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING: MATTHEW DENHOLM, ELLIE DUDLEY, CHARLIE PEEL