Australia's daily COVID-19 cases near 2000 as Delta gains ground

Australia's COVID-19 daily cases topped 1,900 for the first time in the pandemic on Friday as an outbreak fuelled by the highly infectious Delta variant continued to gain ground in locked-down Sydney and Melbourne, its largest cities. Australia is in the grip of a third wave of infections with the Delta outbreak forcing officials to ditch their COVID-zero strategy in favour of suppressing the virus.