MELBOURNE:- Australianpolice detained hundreds of anti-lockdown marchers in Melbourne and Sydney onSaturday (Aug 21) and seven officers were hospitalized as a result of clashes,as officials reported the country’s highest single-day upsurge in Covid-19cases.
Mounted police used pepperspray in Melbourne to disperse the crowds surging towards police lines, whileminute groups of protesters were barred from assembling in Sydney by a largecontingent of riot police.
Victoria state policesaid that they arrested 218 people in the state capital Melbourne. They issued236 fines and kept three people in custody for assaulting police.
The arrested peopleface fines of A$5,452 (S$5,300) each for breaching public health orders.
Police in New SouthWales, where Sydney is the capital, said they charged 47 people with breachingpublic health orders or resisting arrest, among other offences, and issued morethan 260 fines ranging from A$50 to $3,000.
Sydney, a city of morethan five million people, has been in a strict lockdown for weeks now, failingso far to contain an outbreak of the highly transmissible coronavirus Deltavariant, which has spread across internal borders and as far as neighboring NewZealand.
The vast majority ofthe 894 cases reported across Australia on Saturday were found in Sydney, the epicenterof the Delta variant-fueled outbreak.
"We are in a veryserious situation here in New South Wales," state Health Minister BradHazzard said. "There is no time now to be selfish, it’s time to think ofthe broader community and your families."
The police patrolledSydney’s streets and blocked both private and public transport into the centerof the city to reduce the number of people gathering at an unauthorizedprotest.
In Melbourne, a largecrowd managed to march through the city, with some protesters clashing with thepolice, after state Premier Daniel Andrews expanded a lockdown in that city tothe entire state.
Victoria Police ChiefCommissioner Shane Patton had earlier warned people to stay away from theprotest, adding it was "just ridiculous to think that people would be soselfish and come and do this".
Several hundred peoplealso protested peacefully in Brisbane, which is not in lockdown.
Although often violent,anti-lockdown protests are not broadly supported by Australians.
A late-July poll bymarket research firm Utting Research showed that only 7 per cent of peoplesupport the demonstrations.
Compliance with publichealth rules has been one of the key cited reasons behind Australia’s successin managing the pandemic. But the country has been struggling to rein in thethird wave of infections that began in Sydney in mid-June.
Only about a third ofAustralians aged 16 and above have been fully vaccinated, according to federalhealth ministry data released on Saturday.
New South Walesofficials reported three deaths and 516 people in hospital on Saturday. Of the85 people in intensive care, 76 were unvaccinated, officials said.
At least 96 people wereactive in the community during their infectious period, and there were a numberof breaches of public health orders, all slowing the efforts to curtail theoutbreak.
In Victoria, at least39 of the new cases were active in the community while infectious, raisingconcerns over officials’ ability to gain control over the outbreak. Eighteenpeople were in hospital, eight in intensive care and six on ventilators.
Australia’s Covid-19numbers are still relatively low compared with other developed countries, withjust more than 43,000 cases and 978 deaths, but the latest outbreak has seen asignificant resurgence in cases.