Sydney has been in lockdown for nearly two months now, the curbs are generally looser than those that helped Melbourne beat back the virus last year; daily cases have surged from 12 on June 26, when the stay-at-home order was first announced, to records of around 350 this week.
The situation is putting Australia in the worst of both worlds: half the population of 26 million people are cooped up again, but the delta variant is still spreading to new cities and regions hundreds of miles away, just like it is in reopened economies like the U.S.
and U.K. National capital Canberra on Thursday became the latest to order a lockdown after one case were found. New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian is now under increasing pressure from other