As Australia's Covid-19 deaths exceed 1,000, a grim toll but modest by global standards, a country that has used relentless lockdowns now faces perhaps its biggest health policy challenge of the pandemic — how to reopen.

The highly infectious Delta variant has breached the country's fortress-style controls and entrenched itself deep enough in Sydney, Australia's biggest city, and with a foothold in Melbourne, that authorities have dispensed with plans to eliminate it.

Instead, they plan to ramp up Australia's lagging vaccination effort and live with Covid-19, an approach that would help struggling businesses but which is opposed by states determined to crush the disease.

Australia has reported four more fatalities, taking the total death toll from Covid-19 to 1,003, according to government data. It has logged an average of two to three deaths a day recently, the data shows.

But while deaths are creeping higher, infections are surging to successive record highs above 1,200 a day.

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