MELBOURNE: Australia’s New South Wales state recorded its biggest daily rise in COVID-19 infections this year, even as residents in several major cities across the country were released from snap lockdowns on Saturday (Jul 3).

Sydney, the New South Wales state capital and home to a fifth of Australia’s 25 million population, has been hit hardest in a flurry of outbreaks of the highly contagious Delta variant around the country over the past two weeks.

State Premier Gladys Berejiklian reported 35 new cases, 29 of which were linked to previous cases. That eclipsed the 31 cases reported a day earlier, taking total infections under the current outbreak to more than 250.

READ: Australia national cabinet to meet amid COVID-19 vaccine turmoil

“While the number of cases are going up, we are seeing a greater proportion of those in isolation which is what we want to see,” Berejiklian told a press conference.

“We haven’t seen a huge surge in cases … (but) we know the next few days are critical.”

Sydney is halfway through a two-week lockdown. Berejiklian said it was still too early to make a decision on whether to extend the lockdown.

“Health experts are giving myself and my colleagues advice on a daily basis,” she said. “I anticipate that obviously some time next week we’ll be in a position to tell the community where things are at.”

READ: After early COVID-19 response, Australia stuck in vaccine slow lane

Elsewhere in the country, residents enjoyed a taste of freedom as the weekend got underway after lockdowns in Western Australia, the Northern Territory and some areas of Queensland state were lifted on Friday night.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk confirmed that a lockdown in Brisbane would be lifted later on Saturday as she reported five new COVID-19 cases in the state.

Lockdowns, swift contact tracing and tough social distancing rules have helped Australia to suppress prior outbreaks, but the fast-moving Delta strain has alarmed authorities amid a sluggish nationwide vaccination drive.

“I can’t help but think that burning down churches is actually depriving people who are in need of grieving and healing and mourning from places where they can grieve and reflect and look for support.”

On Thursday, statues of Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth on the grounds of the Manitoba legislature were tied with ropes and pulled down by a crowd.

The statue of Queen Victoria was covered in red paint and its base had red handprints on it. On the steps behind the statue were hundreds of tiny shoes, placed there to recognise the children who went to residential schools.

Arlen Dumas, grand chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, was at a separate event at the time but said he was shocked at what happened.

“I personally wouldn’t have participated in that,” he said, though he added, “Mind you, it has been a very triggering time over the past few weeks.”

“It’s unfortunate that they chose to express themselves the way that they did. But it’s actually a symbol of the fact that there is a lot of hurt and that there’s a lot of frustration and anger with just how things have happened,” Dumas said.

Premier Brian Pallister called the vandalism “a major setback for those who are working toward real reconciliation.”

“Those who commit acts of violence will be pursued actively in the courts. All leaders in Manitoba must strongly condemn acts of violence and vandalism, and at the same time, we must come together to meaningfully advance reconciliation,” he said in a statement.

In other incidents on Canada Day, a statue of Queen Victoria in Kitchener, Ontario, was doused in red paint.

In Victoria, British Columbia, a statue of Captain James Cook was dismantled and thrown into the harbor. The statue was replaced with a wooden cutout of a red dress – a symbol representing murdered and missing Indigenous women – and its base was smeared with red handprints.

In St John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, two prominent buildings and a statue dedicated to the local police force were vandalised with bright red paint.

Earlier this week, a First Nations group in British Columbia said it had used ground-penetrating radar to find 182 human remains in unmarked graves at a site close to a former residential near Cranbrook, 845km east of Vancouver.

That followed reports of similar massive findings at two other such church-run schools, one of more than 600 unmarked graves in southern Saskatchewan and another of 215 bodies in British Columbia.

About 150,000 Indigenous children were forced to attend residential schools, which operated for more than 120 years in Canada. More than 60per cent of the schools were run by the Catholic Church.

OTTAWA: Ottawa prepared on Friday (Jul 2) to send military aircraft and other help to evacuate towns and fight more than 100 wildfires in western Canada fueled by a record-smashing heat wave.

According to wildfire officials, at least 143 fires were active in British Columbia, 77 of them sparked in the last two days. Most were caused by lightning strikes.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he would convene an incident response group later in the day to address the emergency needs of the province, adding that he already spoke with British Columbia’s premier, as well as local mayors and indigenous chiefs in communities under threat.

“We will be there to help,” he told a news conference.

That will include military helicopters and possibly Hercules turboprop transport planes, Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan earlier told public broadcaster CBC.

“Canadian Forces are ready to support residents,” he said in a Twitter message.

About 1,000 people have already fled the wildfires in British Columbia, and authorities are searching for many who have gone missing.

The village of Lytton, 250km northeast of Vancouver, was evacuated Wednesday night because of a fire that flared up suddenly and spread quickly.

The fire came a day after the village set a Canadian record-high temperature on Tuesday of 49.6 degrees Celsius.

Fatalities have been reported in Canada’s westernmost province, but an official toll has yet to be released, as members of the British Columbia coroner service headed into hotspots on Friday to begin investigating.

“Today our thoughts are mostly with families that are grieving, that are facing terrible loss,” said Trudeau.

“But of course, we also have to reflect on the fact that extreme weather events are getting more frequent and climate change has a significant role to play in that.”

Lytton resident Jeff Chapman told the CBC he witnessed his parents die in the fire that engulfed the town.

With only minutes to react, the elderly couple sought shelter from the smoke and flames in a trench in their backyard, as Chapman ran for safety at nearby rail tracks.

From that vantage, he said he saw the fires sweep across and destroy most of the town.

His distressed voice could be heard pleading for help over the crackling flames in a video on CBC. The ground, he said, was too hot to go back for his parents.

Meanwhile, a heat wave that stretched at the beginning of the week from the US state of Oregon to Canada’s Arctic territories has started moving eastward, late Thursday touching parts of Ontario in central Canada.

British Columbia also warned Friday of flooding from melting mountain snow caps and glaciers under the heat dome, which occurs when hot air is trapped by high pressure fronts, heating the ground.

MIAMI: The death toll rose to 22 on Friday (Jul 2) from the collapse of a Florida condominium tower after the remains of four more victims were found in the rubble, and local officials ordered a second residential complex evacuated after deeming it unsafe.

All residents of the second building, Crestview Towers, were told to leave immediately after engineers found serious concrete and electrical problems, said Arthur Sorey, city manager for North Miami Beach.

The move was considered urgent due to the approach of Hurricane Isla, which is forecast to hit Florida as early as Monday. The building’s owners had not yet begun a mandatory safety recertification process required 40 years after it was built, he said.

“It’s definitely not an easy decision,” Sorey said. “It’s just the right thing to do during these times. It’s uncertain what’s going to happen with the storm.”

READ: Biden mourns with families as search of collapsed Florida condo resumes

The latest remains recovered from the rubble left behind by the 12-story Champlain Towers South in nearby Surfside left 126 people listed as still missing and feared dead. No survivors have been pulled alive from the ruins since the first few hours after the tower partially caved in on itself early on Jun 24.

The number of people on the missing list dropped by 17 from Thursday, Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava told reporters, saying that the totals were “fluid” and sometimes revised through work by investigators.

Levine Cava said she had signed a demolition order for a remaining section of the tower over worries that it was dangerously unstable halted search and rescue efforts at the scene for much of Thursday.

“It’s important to note that we’re still evaluating all possible impacts and determining the best timeline to actually begin the demolition,” she said.

The operation was scaled back on Friday to three of the nine grids mapped out across the debris field.

HURRICANE ISLA THREATENS

Crews also sought to make progress before the expected arrival of Elsa, which strengthened into the first hurricane of the 2021 season on Friday as it churned in the Caribbean Sea.

The storm could approach South Florida as early as Monday, National Weather Service meteorologist Robert Molleda told reporters, with tropical storm-force winds possible on Sunday. Elsa’s forecast path remains uncertain.

Among the dead found in Surfside on Friday was the daughter of a firefighter, the third child fatality to be recovered so far. Miami Mayor Francis Suarez told the Miami Herald that the firefighter was at the recovery site at the time, though not digging through the rubble.

READ: Before Florida building collapse, more than US$9 million in repairs needed

The man and his brother, also a firefighter, have kept a vigil at the site since last week, the Herald said. About 200 officers saluted as her body was carried away, according to the paper.

“Every victim we remove is very difficult,” said Miami-Dade County Fire Chief Alan Cominsky. “Last night was even more, when we were removing a fellow firefighter’s daughter. As firefighters, we do what we do – it’s kind of a calling. But it still takes a toll.”

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis wrote on Twitter that more than 400 members of the US Army Reserve from Indiana, New Jersey, Ohio and Virginia had arrived in Surfside to assist in the effort.

Investigators have not determined what caused the 40-year-old condo complex to crumble abruptly into a heap in what may ultimately be one of the deadliest building collapses in US history.

A 2018 engineering report prepared for the 40-year recertification process found structural deficiencies that are now the focus of inquiries that include a grand jury examination.

USA Today, citing a 2020 document obtained from a victim’s family member, reported that the firm noted “curious results” after testing the depth of a concrete slab below the pool. The document did not elaborate, the newspaper said.

As recently as April, a condo association president wrote to residents warning them that major concrete damage identified by the engineer around the base of the building had grown significantly worse.

Several lawsuits have already been filed on behalf of survivors and victims against the association’s board.

In a statement on Friday, the board – some of whose members remain missing – said it would appoint an independent receiver to “oversee the legal and claims process”.

WASHINGTON: The United States will ship 4 million doses of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine to Indonesia as it battles a coronavirus outbreak, the US national security adviser told the Indonesian foreign minister on Friday (Jul 2).

In a call with Retno Marsudi, Jake Sullivan said the doses would be shipped via the COVAX global vaccine sharing program “as soon as possible”, a White House statement said.

Sullivan said the donation “underscored the United States’ support for the people of Indonesia as they fight a surge in COVID-19 cases”.

The two officials also discussed US plans to increase assistance for Indonesia’s broader COVID-19 response efforts, the statement said.

READ: Indonesia to boost social, health spending amid COVID-19 battle

“Sullivan highlighted the importance the Biden-Harris administration places on Indonesia, Southeast Asia and ending the pandemic more broadly and pledged continued support and high-level engagement,” the statement said.

Indonesia is the world’s fourth most populous country and has been battling one of the Asia’s worst coronavirus outbreaks. The nation has recorded record new infections on eight of the past 12 days, including 25,830 cases on Friday, and a record 539 deaths.

Indonesia has relied mainly on the vaccine from China’s Sinovac Biotech, but has been looking to diversify supply sources.

Penny K Lukito, the chief of Indonesia’s food and drug agency, said earlier on Friday it authorised the Moderna vaccine for emergency use.

READ: Indonesia ’emergency’ COVID-19 curbs to take effect on Jul 3

Washington has been competing with Beijing to deepen geopolitical clout through so-called vaccine diplomacy, although it has said it is not sharing vaccines to secure favors or extract concessions, but to save lives and end the pandemic.

The Biden administration pledged last month to share an initial 80 million US-made vaccines globally amid concern about the disparity in vaccination rates between advanced and developing countries.

It has already announced plans to provide vaccines to other Southeast Asian countries – the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Papua New Guinea, and Cambodia.

It has also said it will purchase 500 million Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines to distribute to the African Union and 92 low and lower middle-income countries.