Covid Australia live update: NSW outbreak yet to peak amid race to vaccinate young in Sydney hotspots

A second rescue flight from Indonesia is planned following the repatriation of 186 Aussies from Bali, reports AAP.

Around 1200 Australians want to return home from Indonesia, which has racked up nearly 3.9 million official coronavirus cases and more than 120,000 deaths.

An Australian government-facilitated flight ferried 186 people from Denpasar to Darwin on Wednesday.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade says it is working to help more Australians return, including through a second repatriation flight.

Annnnnnnnnnnnnnd the news is just getting worse.

This has not yet been independently confirmed by Guardian Australia but the ABC is reporting that Victoria’s cases will more than double yesterday’s.

We should find out for sure between about 8.45am and 9am when the health department tweets out the official stats.

Good morning all, Matilda Boseley here ready to take you through a full Thursday’s worth of news!

To start, Melbourne has reached a grim milestone today, with residents now having experienced 200 days of lockdown since the start of the pandemic.

Victorian authorities have extended Melbourne’s sixth lockdown by two more weeks, through to 2 September with tough “stage four” conditions including curfews, and case numbers stubbornly remaining in the mid-20s each day.

A pop-up vaccination hub and testing site have been set up in the beachside suburb of St Kilda as concern grows about the number of people unknowingly infected with Covid-19 in the area.

Covid-19 commander Jeroen Weimar has urged anyone who lives or works in the area to come forward for testing, even if they don’t have symptoms.

And the news doesn’t get that much cheerier further north, with NSW leader Gladys Berejiklian suggesting that yesterday’s 633 cases were not yet the peak of the state’s outbreak:

We haven’t seen the worst of it.

NSW is edging closer and closer to the record, 725, set by Victoria on 5 August last year.

Chief health officer Dr Kerry Chant says each infected person is passing on the virus to 1.3 others, on average, meaning case numbers are still likely to grow:

I can’t express enough my level of concern at these rising numbers of cases.

With that dark start to the day, why don’t we jump right in?