<article><p class="lead">The recent outbreak of Covid-19 in Australia has prompted two more state capitals to begin short-term lockdown measures in an attempt to combat the Delta variant.</p><p>Perth in Western Australia (WA) and Brisbane in Queensland join Sydney in New South Wales (NSW) in lockdown measures, while a Covid-19 outbreak at a gold mine in central Australia is causing concern in the country's mining sector.</p><p>WA premier Mark McGowan announced a four-day lockdown for Perth and the adjourning Peel region after it had three cases of community transmission on Monday. Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced a three-day lockdown in the Brisbane area and in Townsville, a port that exports base metals from mines in central Queensland.</p><p>WA and Queensland are Australia's two largest resource producing and exporting states. The Northern Territory (NT) announced a 72-hour lockdown for its capital Darwin where two LNG plants are located, the 3.7mn t/yr Darwin LNG operated by Australian independent Santos and the 8.9mn t/yr Ichthys LNG downstream plant operated by Japanese upstream group Inpex.</p><p>The lockdown in Darwin follows an outbreak of Covid-19 at the Granites gold mine in the Northern Territory. The mine, like a significant proportion of Australian mine and upstream extraction sites, are operated by fly-in, fly-out workers where they often live in other states or territories and fly into where they work. This risks spreading the virus in multiple locations around the country.</p><p>The Australian upstream and mining sector has so far avoided any large outbreaks of the coronavirus.</p><p>The largest outbreak in Australia is in Sydney, NSW with another 19 cases in the last 24 hours. This brings Sydney's total number of cases to 149 so far in the latest outbreak.</p><p>The outbreak in Sydney occurred during the school holidays and is associated with a time when people often drive out of the metropolitan area for holidays, but everyone living in the Sydney area has been told to remain at home and this has resulted in very little traffic on the streets. It has also taken a toll on the nascent recovery in domestic flights with multiple inter-state flights cancelled as state governments restrict inter-state travel.</p><p class="bylines">By Kevin Morrison</p></article>
