Of particular concern, at least 46 of the new cases were people active in the community before being diagnosed, raising the likelihood of transmission. Authorities have cautioned that active community transmission must be near zero before relaxing the rules.

“I am as upset and frustrated as all of you that we were not able to get the case numbers we would have liked at this point in time but that is the reality,” said NSW State Premier Gladys Berejiklian.

“We have to deal with the cards before us and the situation before us and that is why we have taken the action we have.”

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Berejiklian added that police would boost enforcement of wide-ranging social distancing rules and urged people to report suspected wrongdoing, saying “we cannot put up with people continuing to do the wrong thing because it is setting us all back”. In one case, a mourning ceremony attended by 50 people in violation of lockdown rules resulted in 45 infections, she said.

The extension turns what was initially intended to be a “snap” lockdown of Australia’s most populous city into one of the country’s longest since the start of the pandemic, and may spark the second recession of the A$2 trillion (US$1.47 trillion) economy in two years, according to economists.

To minimise the economic impact, the NSW government said it would lift a ban on non-occupied construction in most of Sydney. However, it expanded a list of local government areas within the city where the ban would stay because of the prevalence of Covid-19 cases there.

The popularity of the federal government may suffer from the extended lockdown. Polls show slipping support for Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government amid criticism of a slow vaccination roll-out that has been blamed on changing regulatory advice and supply shortages.

“There is no other short cut, there is no other way through, we have to just hunker down and push through,” said Morrison during a televised news conference in the national capital Canberra. He acknowledged his own family was caught up in the Sydney lockdown. “There will be lots of criticisms, there will be lots of hindsight, but this Delta strain is very unpredictable.”

On Wednesday, the NSW government said it was redirecting Pfizer vaccine doses, which have so far been restricted to people aged 40 to 60, from relatively unaffected regional areas to final-year school students in the worst-affected Sydney neighbourhoods.

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In contrast to NSW, the states of Victoria and South Australia began their first day out of shorter lockdowns that halted outbreaks there. Victoria reported eight new cases, all of them isolated throughout their infectious period, and another case still under investigation. Queensland state reported one new case, a man who completed the country’s mandatory two weeks of hotel quarantine then tested positive nine days later.

Australia has kept its Covid-19 numbers relatively low, with just over 33,200 cases and 921 deaths out of a population of about 25 million since the pandemic began.

South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand report record cases

Health officials say many cases in the Seoul area have been traced to restaurants, schools, public bathhouses, churches and offices. Outside the capital, clusters have been tied to pubs, karaoke rooms, gyms and offices.

South Korea has seen a sudden spike in new infections in the past several weeks amid a slow vaccination roll-out, lax public vigilance and the fast spreading delta variant. Health official Sohn Youngrae told a briefing on Wednesday the most important objective at this point is lowering the trajectory in the Seoul area by the end of next week and slowing the spread of the virus outside the capital region.

Elsewhere, Malaysia’s health ministry reported 17,405 coronavirus cases on Wednesday, a new daily record. The new infections bring the total number of cases in the Southeast Asian nation to 1,061,476.

Neighbouring Thailand reported a daily record of 16,533 new coronavirus infections, bringing the country’s total accumulated cases to 543,361. The country’s Covid-19 task force also reported 133 new deaths, taking total fatalities to 4,397.

Vietnam poised to extend restrictions

Vietnam’s major cities may extend or tighten restrictions on movement to contain the spread of Covid-19 as new daily cases have surpassed 6,000 for seven consecutive days, authorities said on Wednesday.

After successfully containing the virus for much of the pandemic, Vietnam has been facing record daily surges of infections since an outbreak which emerged in late April.

Vietnam reported 6,559 new Covid-19 infections on Wednesday, raising its total number since the start of the pandemic to more than 120,000. Around 450,000 people in the nation of 98 million people have been fully vaccinated, according to official data.

The government has imposed strict curbs on movement in about a third of the sprawling Southeast Asian country, including the commercial hub Ho Chi Minh City in the south and the capital Hanoi in the north.

“Hanoi may impose stricter measures in high-risk areas in order to fight the outbreak more fiercely,” city chairman Chu Ngoc Anh said in a government statement.

Authorities in Ho Chi Minh City said the city might need to prolong its social distancing period by one or two weeks after August 1 as infections were continuing to rise.

Due to the mounting outbreak, the National Assembly, the country’s lawmaking body, decided to cut short a session in Hanoi by three days to end on Wednesday.

Authorities are rushing to temporarily isolate the meeting venue and test journalists who were at the closing ceremony after the discovery of a suspected Covid-19 case, witnesses said. The current outbreak has raised pressure on the government to shore up its vaccine supply and speed up inoculations.

Phuket Sandbox risks suspension

The resort island reported 125 new Covid-19 cases during the week ending July 27, higher than the government-set threshold of 90 weekly cases that could trigger a temporary suspension of the programme. In response, local authorities closed public schools and shopping malls and banned gatherings of more than 100 people from Tuesday to stem the virus from spreading further.

Most new cases were among local residents, and all the high-risk contacts on the island have been isolated to prevent further spread, officials said. Only 26 vaccinated visitors out of the more than 11,800 have tested positive for the virus since the so-called Phuket Sandbox was launched on July 1, they said.

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The Covid-19 resurgence in Phuket mirrors the situation elsewhere in Thailand and the broader Southeast Asian region, where authorities are struggling to contain the spread fuelled by the more contagious Delta variant. Any setback to the Phuket quarantine-free travel would hurt Thailand’s plan to expand the model to more islands and beach resorts to rescue its vital tourism industry.

It may still be too early to suspend the Phuket model as authorities are watching for more signs of a wider spread of infections. About 70 per cent of Phuket’s population are fully inoculated, compared to about 5 per cent nationwide, official data showed.

“We’re entering a tightening mode and reducing local activities on the island, but we have several circuit breakers in place before there’s a suspension to the reopening programme,” said Thaneth Tantipiriyakij, president of the Tourism Council of Phuket. “With the surge in infections, our focus right now is to assess the situation day-by-day and week-by-week.”

Reporting by Reuters, Bloomberg, Associated Press