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People out exercising at East Circular Quay on August 29, 2021 in Sydney, Australia. New South Wales recorded a record number of 1218 COVID-19 cases on Sunday and 6 deaths.
As Australia's Covid-19 deaths exceed 1,000, a grim toll but modest by global standards, a country that has used relentless lockdowns now faces perhaps its biggest health policy challenge of the pandemic — how to reopen.
The highly infectious delta variant has breached the country's fortress-style controls and entrenched itself deep enough in Sydney, Australia's biggest city, and with a foothold in Melbourne, that authorities have dispensed with plans to eliminate it.
Instead, they plan to ramp up Australia's lagging vaccination effort and live with Covid-19, an approach that would help struggling businesses but which is
opposed by states determined to crush the disease.
Australia reported four fatalities on Monday, taking the total death toll from Covid-19 to 1,003, according to government data. It has logged an average of two to three deaths a day recently, the data shows.
But while deaths are creeping higher, infections are surging to successive record highs above 1,200 a day.
With more than half the population in lockdown, even those areas with little or no infections are affected.
The exuberance that accompanied Australia's early suppression success has since been replaced with community frustration at a delayed vaccine program that has only recently picked up pace. Just over 33% of those aged 16 and older have received two vaccine doses, well below most comparable nations, according to a Reuters tracker.
Comment: Hungary and Russia have quite a few conservative views in common that have drawn ire from the West, but with Hungary being part of the EU it is more vulnerable to the pressure to conform, however it's likely that a significant energy deal with Russia will make it a little more difficult for the establishment to exert that pressure: