SYDNEY: Troops hit Sydney’s streets on Monday to help enforce its prolonged lockdown, as stay-at-home orders in Australia’s third-largest city Brisbane were extended to curb a worsening outbreak.
About 300 Australian Defense Force personnel will be deployed to the country’s largest city after New South Wales state police requested military help to enforce COVID-19 rules.
Authorities have been struggling to stop the spread of the highly infectious Delta variant in Sydney — and ensure that residents follow containment rules — with more than 3,600 cases recorded since mid-June.
With thousands of close contacts of COVID cases told to test and stay at home for 14 days, police said they lacked the manpower to make sure everyone was complying.
Troops are expected to help police deliver food parcels, conduct “welfare door-knocks” and check people are complying with self-isolation orders.
“I want to stress up front again that we will be under control of the NSW police,” said Brig. Mick Garraway.
“We are not a law enforcement agency and we will do tasks that are supportive in nature.”
More than five million people in Sydney and surrounding areas are entering their sixth week of a lockdown set to run until the end of August.
Residents are only allowed to leave their homes for exercise, essential work, medical reasons, and to shop for necessities such as food.
But compliance has been patchy and police have increasingly been doling out fines to those violating the restrictions.
The defense force said the latest deployment was in addition to the 250 military personnel already working at hotels and airports in New South Wales.
In Brisbane and several surrounding regions, millions of people will remain under lockdown until Sunday after an “escalating” outbreak grew to 29 cases.
Those stay-at-home orders had been scheduled to lift on Tuesday.
“That will make it an eight-day lockdown. And we desperately hope that that will be sufficient for our contact tracers to get into home quarantine absolutely anyone who could have been exposed to the Delta strain,” acting Queensland state premier Steven Miles said.
The outbreak was linked to a Brisbane school student, with pupils and teachers at several schools subsequently placed into isolation.
Defense Minister Peter Dutton’s sons attend one of the schools hit, so he is among those being forced to quarantine at home for 14 days.
“Having had COVID and being fully vaccinated, I have also tested negative this morning,” he said in a statement.
With about 15 percent of Australia’s 25 million people fully vaccinated, authorities are still relying on lockdowns to slow the spread of the virus.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has outlined a long road out of restrictions — setting a target of 80 percent of the eligible population to be fully vaccinated before borders are reopened and lockdowns eliminated.
Australia has recorded more than 34,000 cases and 925 deaths so far during the pandemic.
Troops to enforce Sydney lockdown as Brisbane extends coronavirus curbs
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Troops to enforce Sydney lockdown as Brisbane extends coronavirus curbs
- New South Wales state police requested military help to enforce COVID-19 rules
- Australia has recorded more than 34,000 cases and 925 deaths so far during the pandemic
UN chief calls on Israel to reverse NGOs ban in Gaza
- In November, authorities in Gaza said more than 70,000 people had been killed there since the war broke out
- Israel on Thursday suspended 37 foreign humanitarian organizations from accessing the Gaza Strip after they had refused to share lists of their Palestinian employees with government officials
UNITED NATIONS, United States: UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called on Friday for Israel to end a ban on humanitarian agencies that provided aid in Gaza, saying he was “deeply concerned” at the development.
Guterres “calls for this measure to be reversed, stressing that international non-governmental organizations are indispensable to life-saving humanitarian work and that the suspension risks undermining the fragile progress made during the ceasefire,” his spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.
“This recent action will further exacerbate the humanitarian crisis facing Palestinians,” he added.
Israel on Thursday suspended 37 foreign humanitarian organizations from accessing the Gaza Strip after they had refused to share lists of their Palestinian employees with government officials.
The ban includes Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which has 1,200 staff members in the Palestinian territories — the majority of whom are in Gaza.
NGOs included in the ban have been ordered to cease their operations by March 1.
Several NGOS have said the requirements contravene international humanitarian law or endanger their independence.
Israel says the new regulation aims to prevent bodies it accuses of supporting terrorism from operating in the Palestinian territories.
On Thursday, 18 Israel-based left-wing NGOs denounced the decision to ban their international peers, saying “the new registration framework violates core humanitarian principles of independence and neutrality.”
A fragile ceasefire has been in place since October, following a deadly war waged by Israel in response to Hamas’s unprecedented October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
In November, authorities in Gaza said more than 70,000 people had been killed there since the war broke out.
Nearly 80 percent of buildings in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged by the war, according to UN data, leaving infrastructure decimated.
About 1.5 million of Gaza’s more than two million residents have lost their homes, said Amjad Al-Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGO Network in Gaza.
