Australia's worst day of pandemic sees restrictions tighten

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia’s most populous state on Monday reported its worst day of the pandemic with 478 new infections and seven COVID-19 deaths as pandemic restrictions tightened in other parts of the country.

The previous record daily tally in New South Wales was 466 new cases reported on Saturday.

Two of the dead had received a single dose of a two-shot vaccine. The rest were unvaccinated, New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian said.

Only 26% of Australians aged 16 and older had been fully vaccinated by Saturday. Australia has one of the slowest vaccine rollouts among wealthy countries, which is making the spread of the delta variant particularly dangerous.

The first shipment of 1 million Pfizer doses that Australia bought from Poland arrived in Sydney overnight.

Residents aged 16-to-39 in Sydney’s worst-effected suburbs will be given 530,000 of the new doses, the government said. This age group was responsible for most of the virus spread.

Berejiklian blamed Sydney residents’ failure to comply with the city’s lockdown restrictions and stay-at-home orders for the escalating infections.

“The case numbers are disturbingly high and we are ... at a fork in the road,” Berejiklian said.

“We will see the numbers come down when people stay home and people don’t move about unless they absolutely have to. Until we see that, we’re not going to see the case numbers go down,” she added.

Melbourne reported 22 new infections on Monday. Even with the substantially smaller problem, Victoria state Premier Danial Andrews said Australia’ largest city after Sydney was at a “tipping point” in its battle to stamp out all infections.

A lockdown that was due to end on Thursday was extended to Sept. 2 with a 9 p.m.-to-5...