Australia & Pacifics

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — New Zealand’s government on Monday said it will extend a strict nationwide lockdown until at least Friday as it tries to extinguish a growing coronavirus outbreak.

The news came as health authorities reported 35 new local infections of the fast-spreading delta variant, the highest number of daily COVID-19 cases in New Zealand since April last year.

MELBOURNE, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Australia will stick to its lockdown strategy against the coronavirus until at least 70% of its population is fully vaccinated, but after that it will have to start living with the virus, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Sunday.

The country set a record with 914 infections, its highest daily figure, as the southern and eastern states of New South Wales, Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory remain under a strict lockdown.

SYDNEY (AP) — More than 250 people who were protesting coronavirus lockdowns in Australia were arrested Saturday and many faced fines for defying health orders, authorities said.

At least seven police officers were treated for injuries after skirmishes broke out at some of the protests, which took place in multiple cities nationwide. The largest and most violent protest was in Melbourne. Many were organized by people in encrypted online chat groups.

Sydney, Aug 20 (AP-PTI) A lockdown in Australia's largest city was extended through September and tougher measures to curb the coronavirus's delta variant were imposed Friday, including a curfew and a mask mandate outdoors.

New South Wales state, which includes Sydney, reported 642 locally acquired infections in the latest 24-hour period, the fourth consecutive day of tallies exceeding 600.

Canberra, Aug 18 (AP-PTI) Australia had evacuated the first 26 people, including Australian and Afghan citizens, from Kabul since the Taliban overran the Afghan capital, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Wednesday.

An Air Force C-130 Hercules transport aircraft landed at an Australian military base in the United Arab Emirates with the 26 who included a foreign official working for an international agency, Morrison said. The remainder were Australians and Afghans.

SYDNEY, Aug 18 (Reuters) - Sydney's Delta outbreak has not peaked and residents must brace for more deaths, authorities said on Wednesday, as Australia's largest city continued to break records for new daily infections despite a nearly two-month lockdown.

"We haven't seen the worst of it and the way that we stop this is by everybody staying at home," New South Wales (NSW) Premier Gladys Berejiklian told reporters in Sydney, the state capital.

WELLINGTON, Aug 18 (Reuters) - New Zealand's city streets were largely deserted on Wednesday as the country returned to life in lockdown for the first time in six months in a bid to halt any spread of the infectious Delta variant of the coronavirus.

New Zealand had been virus-free and living without curbs until Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern ordered a snap 3-day nationwide lockdown on Tuesday after a single case, suspected to be Delta, was found in the largest city Auckland.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — New Zealand’s government took drastic action Tuesday by putting the entire nation into a strict lockdown for at least three days after finding a single case of coronavirus infection in the community.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern invoked some of the stirring rhetoric she used early in the pandemic by urging the “team of 5 million” — New Zealand’s population — to go hard and early in trying to eliminate the latest outbreak.

“We have seen what happens elsewhere if we fail to get on top of it,” Ardern said. “We only get one chance.”

CANBERRA/SYDNEY, Aug 16 (Reuters) - Australia's biggest city of Sydney recorded its deadliest day of the COVID-19 pandemic on Monday as troops and police set up roadblocks to limit the movement of people, while Melbourne faced a nightly curfew and a further two weeks of lockdown.

Sydney, which is in its eighth week of lockdown, is the epicentre of Australia's third COVID-19 wave that threatens to push the country's A$2 trillion ($1.5 trillion) economy into its second recession in as many years.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — The Australian government said Friday that it remained seriously concerned about the welfare of a Chinese-born Australian journalist a year after she was first detained in China.

Foreign Minister Marise Payne used the first anniversary of Cheng Lei’s detention on Aug. 13 to tell China that Australia expected “basic standards of justice, procedural fairness and humane treatment to be met, in accordance with international norms.”