This is the moment an Australia man brutally beat a female police officer in Sydney while she was enforcing the city's strict lockdown...
This is the moment an Australia man brutally beat a female police officer in Sydney while she was enforcing the city's strict lockdown rules.
The man launched his attack in the suburb of Bankstown around midday Monday after the officers saw him standing in the street and asked him to move along.
Video shows one officer being repeatedly kicked and punched while her colleague calls for help having been kicked in the chest and punched moments earlier - suffering 'cuts and bruises'.
Police said a 43-year-old man was later arrested on suspicion of assault and breaking lockdown, before he allegedly attacked a third male officer at the station. All three cops went to hospital for treatment.
Sydney is now entering its 12th week under draconian lockdown rules which ban people from leaving home without a 'reasonable excuse' and mean they cannot loiter in public places to combat an outbreak of the Delta Covid variant.
The tough measures were designed to eliminate all cases as part of a so-called 'zero Covid' strategy, but state leaders have been forced to abandon that approach after infections proved all-but impossible to eradicate.
Instead, the road-map to freedom is now based on the number of adults who have been fully vaccinated - with the first major easing coming when 70 per cent are fully jabbed, and the second easing at 80 per cent.
Currently, around 46 per cent of adults in New South Wales are fully vaccinated. If jabs continue at their current pace, lockdown should start to ease around the middle of October.
A man was caught on camera brutally beating a female police officer in western Sydney on Monday after cops confronted him for breaking lockdown rules
The attack began when the officers asked the man to 'move along' because he was standing in the street, which is not permitted under the city's harsh laws
After the 70 per cent target has been reached, pubs, shops, gyms, and restaurants will be allowed to reopen - though only for those with full vaccine protection and with social distancing and mask-wearing rules in place.
Outdoor gatherings will be limited to 20 people, though ticketed events will be allowed up to a maximum of 5,000 people provided social distancing can be maintained.
Just six people will be allowed to gather indoors, though that rises to 50 people at weddings and funerals.
Restrictions will then be further eased once the 80 per cent target has been reached, though ministers have not yet said exactly what rules will change.
Some measures also eased in the state starting from today, with groups of up to five double-jabbed people allowed to meet in public.
Areas of New South Wales which have recorded zero Covid cases have also been allowed to reopen shops and other businesses.
Police Detective Superintendent Todd Cunningham said the Bankstown attack happened when the two female officers confronted a man who was standing in the middle of the road and had 'almost been hit by a bus.'
He said the two female cops, aged 30 and 32, had asked the man to move along when he attacked them - kicking and punching one before rounding on her colleague after she tried to come to her aid.
The man then ran off towards a nearby station and boarded a train while members of the public came to help the two cops.
Police used CCTV to track the man to his home in Yagoona, around a mile away, where he was then arrested.
While being taken into custody he attacked a third officer - a 32-year-old man - who was also punched and kicked.
Superintendent Cunningham praised the officers for working in the community 'under difficult circumstances, especially around COVID.'
'We don’t expect this when they come to work, especially in such trying conditions when everybody has been at home,' he added.
'The officers have come to work every day, putting their own families at risk when they go home, and they shouldn’t have to put up with this.'
Sydney is now entering its 12th week in strict lockdown measures after Australia's 'zero Covid' strategy failed to eradicate cases of the highly-infectious Delta variant.
New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian has now all-but abandoned the strategy, and is instead linking the end of lockdown restrictions with the number of fully vaccinated people rather than the number of cases.
She has promised the state's 8million residents that measures will begin easing when 70 per cent of people are fully vaccinated, a target that is expected to be hit in the middle of next month.
Around 46 per cent of eligible adults have so-far been fully jabbed.
But, Ms Berejiklian has warned, those who are not fully protected should not expect to be granted the same freedoms as those who are.
'For those of you who choose not to be vaccinated, that is your choice, but don't expect to do everything that vaccinated people do,' she said.
'Our vaccination rates keep increasing, however there has been a slight slowdown. So we encourage everybody to come forward and get vaccinated.'
Some curbs were eased for fully vaccinated residents in Sydney from Monday. Five people will be allowed to meet outside while members from the same family in Sydney's 12 hardest-hit suburbs can gather outside for two hours.
Australia is scrambling to control outbreaks of the highly infectious Delta variant of the novel coronavirus that began in Sydney in June and spread to Melbourne and Canberra, plunging nearly half the population of 25 million into lockdown.
Other state capitals, however, have few or zero cases.
The steady rise in infections has turned up the heat on the federal government to procure emergency vaccine supplies.
An additional 1 million doses of Moderna was bought from the European Union on Sunday while vaccine swap deals with Britain and Singapore were executed over the last two weeks.
Lieutenant General John Frewen, head of the federal government's vaccination taskforce, said there would be enough vaccines from the middle of October to fully inoculate every eligible person.
The COVID-19 vaccination drive was expanded on Monday to include around one million children aged 12-15.
Australian biotech company CSL, which locally produces the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, said a positive case was detected at its Melbourne facility but production would not be interrupted.
Australia's total cases stand at around 75,300, including 1,098 deaths, although the mortality rate in the latest outbreak is lower than last year.
A total of 1,257 new cases were registered in New South Wales on Monday, while neighbouring Victoria reported 473 new infections, its biggest one-day rise for 2021.
Some lockdown rules in Sydney were eased from Monday, with small groups of fully-jabbed people allowed to meet in public in low-risk areas
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