The situation remains most concerning in Sydney, where some five million residents are subject to a stay-at-home order.
The New South Wales (NSW) state government on Sunday expanded a lockdown to cover all of Greater Sydney, the Blue Mountains, Central Coast and Wollongong.
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image captionSydney residents queued to get tested at this drive-through clinic at Bondi Beach
Many businesses and venues have been ordered shut.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian on Monday reported 18 new cases, down from the 30 reported the previous day. Nearly 59,000 people had been tested in the past 24 hours.
“We have to be prepared for the numbers to bounce around and we have to be prepared for the numbers to go up considerably because with this strain, we are seeing almost 100% of transmission within households,” she said.
Just a week ago Sydney was still in near Covid-free bliss – with people packed into restaurants and dancing in clubs in the city.
But the swift spread of Delta has upended months of the city, and the country’s ” new normal”. The strain is now linked to three of four clusters affecting Australia.
Experts say the nation’s defences have been beaten, multiple times, by the powerful variant. It’s breached hotel quarantine several times raising concerns about air transmission.
It’s also managed to break through relaxed distancing rules in society, latching onto unprotected workers. Mask-wearing is now back in almost every state in Australia.
In Sydney, officials say the virus is infecting 100% of household contacts when it’s brought into a home. It’s too early to tell if this lockdown will contain it, according to experts.
Low vaccination rates have also left Australians vulnerable.
One expert told me it’s a “perfect storm” for “what is now easily the most dominant variant in the world”.
NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard has described the Delta variant which was first detected in India as a “very formidable foe”.
“No matter what defensive steps we’re taking at the moment, the virus seems to understand how to counter-attack,” he said.
Rapid spread
While the two cases in Western Australia have been traced to the Sydney outbreak, the positive cases in Queensland and the Northern Territory have been linked to people who became infected despite completing hotel quarantine.
The remote Northern Territory has recorded seven cases, prompting authorities to extend a lockdown of the capital, Darwin on Monday until Friday.
The Delta outbreak there had spread from a mining camp and now posed significant risk to the community, officials said.
“For the first time, we do have public exposure sites in the Northern Territory,” said Chief Minister Michael Gunner.
Authorities are also on alert after a member of cabin crew staff for Virgin Australia worked on five domestic flights while infected with the Delta variant. The airline has contacted all affected passengers and crew.
Travel bubble suspended
The outbreaks have prompted some inter-state and international border closures.
New Zealand paused its quarantine-free travel bubble with all of Australia until at least Tuesday because of the latest outbreak.
The travel corridor between the two neighbours was opened in April. Travel between New Zealand and specific Australian regions has been closed for short periods as outbreaks emerged, but this is the first time the bubble has been shut with all of Australia.
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image captionSydney – Australia’s largest city – is in lockdown until 9 July
Australia has maintained very low rates of Covid transmission throughout the pandemic due to a closed-border policy, stringent quarantine and swift testing and tracing systems.
It has recorded no deaths this year, but 910 deaths and 30,450 cases overall.
The newer, more infectious Covid variants however, have strained the nation’s defences – with several small outbreaks this year.
Sydney’s outbreak first emerged two weeks ago in Bondi, the famous beach suburb, before spreading rapidly across the city.
Its origin has been linked to an unvaccinated driver who transported international arrivals from the airport.
Vaccination rollout
The NSW government has urged people to get their vaccine – noting that in one of the Sydney clusters, 24 of 30 people at a party became infected and those who didn’t had been vaccinated.
“If you’re vaccinated, you are much more likely to not be infected with Covid-19,” Mr Hazzard told reporters on Monday.
The recent outbreaks have renewed criticism of the nation’s slow vaccination rollout – which falls under the federal government’s purview.
So far, just under 5% of Australia’s adult population have been fully vaccinated under a phased rollout, and roughly 30% have received a first dose of either the Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccine.
However, significant levels of hesitancy have been recorded around the AstraZeneca vaccine due to its link to a rare blood clotting syndrome. Meanwhile, Pfizer supplies have been limited to certain age groups.
Government critics have argued that cities would not need to endure lockdowns if a majority of the population was vaccinated.
Health experts are calling on the Biden administration to do more to encourage and promote the use of vaccine mandates and passports.
So far, the White House has stayed out of what they view as an issue for private employers.
The Biden administration has repeatedly said vaccine passports won’t be implemented at the federal level but has not discouraged individual companies from making the personal choice of implementing one.
Officials have also shied away from using mandates among federal employees or among military forces.
“If a company, a business wants to take steps to keep their workers and their passengers safe, I would think that, from a government perspective, we want to do everything we can to encourage that,” Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said recently.
There is no way to tell who is vaccinated and who is not without asking for proof, but the federal government has not given any kind of guidance or support to businesses that want to require proof of vaccination for customers and employees.
With the nation poised to miss President Biden‘s July 4 goal of 70 percent partial vaccination, experts argue that more vocal support of mandates and passports could help to boost lagging vaccination rates.
“The Biden administration shouldn’t be so squeamish about vaccine verification,” said Leana Wen, a public health professor at George Washington University and former health commissioner of Baltimore.
Wen said the administration should have supported a standardized verification system, calling it a “missed opportunity” to increase vaccine uptake.
Some people may just be waiting for the right incentive, and a mandate may push them in the right direction, she said.
“There are a lot of people in the middle. They’re not eager to get the vaccine, but they’re also not anti-vaxxers. They need an additional push. And that push is still not there, because we have not been requiring proof of vaccination in order to return to normal,” Wen said.
Polls show that young adults in particular would be motivated to get vaccinated if it was required in certain instances.
The Kaiser Family Foundation’s vaccine tracker found about 40 percent of young adults ages 18 to 29 would get vaccinated if it was a requirement for large gatherings like sporting events or concerts, flying on an airplane, or for international travel.
According to Kaiser, the people who would get the vaccine only if it was required mainly say they don’t feel they want or need the vaccine. They are not opposed to it, they just might not do it unless someone forced their hand.
For employers, experts said it is easier for certain industries to mandate vaccinations over others, especially in health care.
But on the flip side, they will also need to be prepared for the fallout, especially if a large proportion of the staff refuses to be vaccinated. Larger businesses will be better equipped to handle it than smaller ones.
For example, Houston Methodist terminated or accepted the resignations of 153 workers after a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit over its mandatory vaccination policy. It was one of the first hospital systems in the nation to impose a COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said he expects more employers will mandate vaccinations once the vaccines are fully approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
Both Moderna and Pfizer have applied for full approval, and a decision is expected later this summer.
“I think that the administration needs to really push on the FDA to get full licensure of these vaccines, because I think that’s one thing that’s holding back those mandates,” Adalja said.
Adalja also faulted the Biden administration for not having a standardized vaccine certificate or electronic app for companies or venues that want one.
“The idea of trying to have a kind of vaccine certificate or some way to prove your vaccination status, I think this is something that the government should have anticipated and thought through early on … and made some way to make this easy to verify, instead of those flimsy cards they give you,” Adalja said.
The idea of mandates and vaccine passports is politically fraught though, and there is concern that any comments from the White House could backfire, especially in the rural, conservative areas of the country that have some of the lowest vaccination rates in the nation.
Many Republican governors have banned mandates and passports in any form, including from private employers, emphasizing that vaccination is a personal choice.
In addition, well-funded anti-vaccination groups are eager to challenge any kind of vaccine requirement.
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