A sanitising worker wipes down contact points on a suburban train heading out to one of Sydney’s hot spots in the city’s south-west.
Many of these low-paid workers are migrants, the majority with a background from either South America or the Indian subcontinent. Although she didn’t want to giver her name, this worker told me she was from Brazil and hadn’t seen her family for more than two years. With the COVID-19 situation in Brazil continuing to be extremely precarious, she has serious concerns for her friends and relatives back home. Around 20 million people in Brazil have contracted the virus since the pandemic broke out and over half a million have died from the disease. There were nearly 1,500 deaths yesterday alone.
While Sydney’s COVID numbers pale in comparison, the city is still grappling with the virulent Delta strain, which has forced the city into lockdown for the last month.
Part of an ongoing series,’COVID-19 Diaries’.
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