Lockdown crackdown: Sydney police to step up enforcement after COVID record

Sydney: Australian authorities on Tuesday vowed to crank up policing of anti-COVID lockdown rules in Sydney, but dismissed suggestions that tougher measures, including a curfew, were needed after the city reported its biggest single-day new case number yet.

With more than five million residents of Australia's biggest city now in lockdown for more than six weeks, Sydney reported 343 new infections in an outbreak stoked by the spread of the highly transmissible Delta strain of COVID-19, up 66 from the day before and topping the last one-day peak set on Saturday.  Tougher policing in the most-affected areas has divided Sydney and stoked resentment in some of Australia's most migrant-heavy neighbourhoods.