Sydney, Australia's largest city, in two-week hard COVID-19 lockdown

MELBOURNE: Sydney and some surrounding areas will enter a hard two-week COVID-19 lockdown on Saturday as authorities struggle to control a fast-spreading outbreak of the highly infectious Delta variant that has grown to 80 cases.

Parts of Sydney, Australia's biggest city, were already under lockdown due to the outbreak, but health authorities said cases and exposure sites were increasing too rapidly. "Even though we don't want to impose burdens unless we absolutely have to, unfortunately this is a situation where we have to," said New South Wales state Premier Gladys Berejiklian.