The leader of Australia’s New South Wales (NSW) state on Wednesday ordered a week-long extension of Sydney’s COVID-19 lockdown, warning new cases are bound to rise as the country’s biggest city grapples with the highly infectious Delta variant. Sydney, home to a fifth of Australia’s 25 million people, was plunged into lockdown on June 26 as a Delta variant outbreak persuaded officials to tighten restrictions in a country that has been slow to vaccinate. Strict stay-at-home orders were due to end on Friday, but now remain in place until July 16. “This Delta strain is a game-changer, it is extremely transmissible and more contagious than any other form of the virus that we’ve seen,” NSW state Premier Gladys Berejiklian told reporters in Sydney. With Sydney fighting its worst outbreak of the year so far, total infections have topped 350 since the first case was […]