Daily Covid cases in Australia’s epicentre dips

As the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) saw another drop in the single-day acquired Covid-19 cases, authorities in the country’s epicentre of the pandemic have cautiously pointed at a downward trend in the current Delta outbreak.

NSW recorded 935 new locally acquired cases in the last 24 hours, marking the first time that new daily cases have dropped below 1,000 since August 27, reports Xinhua news agency.

Despite the tapering of new infections, the number of Covid-19 hospitalisations in the state’s intensive care units (ICU) continued to grow, with 236 patients currently in ICU up from 234 on Sunday.

The state also recorded four additional deaths, bringing the total death toll from NSW’s current outbreak to 245.

While optimistic, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said on Monday that citizens should not “read too much into” the drop in cases, noting that October is still predicted to be the worst month for the state’s hospital systems.

“Come October, there will be weeks where our system will be technically overwhelmed,” said Berejiklian, noting that the most relevant figure remains the vaccination rate.

NSW Health reported on Monday that 82.2 per cent of the above-16 population have now received their first dose of the vaccine, and 52.7 per cent have been fully vaccinated.

Despite many areas of rural NSW having exited lockdown on September 11, NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant announced that the rural town of Cowra would re-enter lockdown from 5 p.m. on Monday following a new local outbreak.

“There was a nine-year-old boy who attended school in Cowra while infectious, and there were a number of associated community exposures,” she said at Monday’s press conference.