SYDNEY (AUSTRALIA) – New South Wales, the most populous state of Australia, recorded its biggest daily rise in the number of new infections in more than a month on Thursday. This comes as a growing cluster is threatening to slow the lifting of curbs.
State authorities said there were 12 new cases over the past 24 hours, the biggest one-day spurt since September 2 when 17 infections were reported.
With the rise in new cases, the reopening of the frontier between the state and Queensland could be delayed. The federal government wants the restriction to be removed at the earliest to boost the struggling economy.
Last week, Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the frontier with New South Wales would be opened on November 1 on the condition that the state should not have any new cases that the authorities cannot trace the source of for 28 days at a stretch.
Of the new cases in New South Wales, four were in quarantine after returning from overseas and all but one of the new locally transmitted cases have been traced.
Palaszczuk said the state needs to trace all its cases to avoid a delay of the border reopening.
In the past 24 hours, Victoria state, which is the epicentre of the country’s second wave of infections, marked 11 new cases over the past 24 hours.