SYDNEY: Australia's Sydney city has experienced an uptick of community cases, over half of which are still under investigation, with health authorities scrambling to regain control. In the 24 hours to 8 p.m. on Tuesday night, the state of New South Wales  the epicentre of Australia's current outbreak, recorded 110 new community cases, of which only 54 have been linked to a known case or cluster, according to reports.

The number of unlinked transmissions raised concerns that New South Wales  is losing control of the outbreak. Health authorities remain hopeful that contact tracers will be able to link the chains. "Hopefully most of them will be linked eventually but there is concern that there are unlinked cases which mean that because it is so transmissible, people are not aware of who they have been in contact with," said NSW Deputy Chief Health Officer Jeremy McAnulty. Worryingly, just 37 of these new cases were in isolation throughout the entirety of their infectious period.

Still expecting a turnaround, NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian said on Wednesday that Sydney is yet to see the effects of restrictions tightened last Saturday. "We obviously went into harsher conditions last week and we won't have a sense until this weekend and early next week what the result of those harsher restrictions have been and I just ask for everybody's patience," she said.

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