The source of Sydney's initial outbreak has been traced back to an infected pilot on a FedEx freighter plane that flew in from San Francisco on 16 June. He passed it on to a limousine driver* taking him to an overnight hotel. The infected driver then went shopping at Westfield Mall in Bondi Junction and the rest is history.
Since then, cases have been popping up everywhere. Currently, Brisbane, Melbourne, Canberra, and all of NSW are in total lockdown. In essence 2/3 of the country's population is now stuck at home.
Melbourne has been battling the Delta variant for weeks and despite its best efforts, it can’t get newly reported cases below 20 a day. Last night, New Zealand also went into national lockdown. Today it reported 7 Delta cases in Auckland. They’ve traced the genomic sequence back to NSW.
Our COVID Zero world looks like it’s coming to a rapid end.
UPDATE: 22 August
Local COVID cases continue to soar! NSW recorded 830 new locally acquired cases of COVID-19 in the 24 hours to 8pm last night. It looks like we've yet to peak during this outbreak.
UPDATE: 17 October
New Scientist magazine has published a superb summary of this latest lockdown. It sums up the last 107 days very nicely. You can read more here. Daily cases fell to 301 today.
*Updated link that now references the history of this driver's subsequent trial by media.
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