coronavirus infections this year on Saturday, with authorities warning that worse may yet to come for Sydney, which is in a three-week hard lockdown.
There were 50 new cases of community transmission in the country's most populous state, up from 44 a day earlier, the previous 2021 record high.
This brings the outbreak of the highly infectious Delta variant to 489 cases. Of Saturday's cases, 26 were people who had spent time in the community while they were infectious, deepening concerns that the lockdown of more than 5 million people in Sydney and surroundings will be extended. "When you know that there are 26 cases infectious in the community, the only conclusion we can draw is that things are going to get worse before they get better,"