The Victorian government now says it too, like New South Wales, won't be able to eliminate the virus. It's instead banking on a high vaccination rate before opening back up. Another big jump in Victoria today - 176 new cases. Sydney will soon have set the unwanted record for Australia's longest lockdown of the pandemic - people there have been in some sort of lockdown since late June. The only hope on the horizon for Sydney is that 70 percent of the New South Wales population is expected to be fully vaccinated by mid-October. Yet daily cases in the state regularly top 1000. Max Towle spoke to Professor Mary-Louise McLaws about all of this gloominess - she's an epidemiologist at the University of New South Wales.