Sydney, Australia, begins two-week COVID lockdown

From Australia to Israel and around Europe, health officials announced new restrictions ahead of the weekend as they report clusters of outbreaks and try to mitigate further transmissions.Authorities try to contain a fast-spreading outbreak of the highly infectious Delta Coronavirus Variant.

More than 1 million people in downtown Sydney and eastern suburbs of Australia's biggest city were already under lockdown due to the outbreak, but health authorities said they needed to expand the curbs after more infections were recorded, with exposure sites increasing beyond the initial areas of concern.

“Even though we don’t want to impose burdens unless we absolutely have to, unfortunately this is a situation where we have to,” said New South Wales state Premier Gladys Berejiklian.