Sydney, 21 August 2021 (dpa/MIA) - More than 200 people were arrested in Australia on Saturday after thousands took to the streets to protest a further tightening of the country's coronavirus measures, local media reported. By afternoon, police had arrested 218 people in the city of Melbourne alone, handing out fines of 5,452 Australian dollars (3,890 US dollars) to 236 individuals, the AAP news agency reported. According to the report, some 4,000 people took part in the rally. Videos shared on social media of the protests showed mostly unmasked protesters shouting "freedom" as they clashed with police in the city. Police reportedly used pepper spray and six officers were brought into hospital with injuries. In Sydney, the capital of Australia's New South Wales (NSW), over 1,500 officers had been deployed to prevent or disrupt unauthorized protests, local media reported. NSW on Saturday reported an all-time high number of new Covid-19 cases despite being eight weeks into lockdown. The state reported 825 new local transmitted cases and seven overseas acquired ones, as well as three more deaths, as of Friday evening. With 61 new locally transmitted cases in Victoria, and eight reported in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), home to the capital Canberra, there were 894 new local cases reported in Australia, a number that eclipsed the record of 754 local infections nationwide set on Thursday. Premier Daniel Andrews on Saturday announced that a lockdown in the Victorian capital Melbourne would be extended to the rest of the state as the Covid-19 cluster there continued to grow. NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian a day earlier announced that a lockdown in Greater Sydney would be extended until the end of September and further tightening of restrictions from Monday. Meanwhile hundreds of people gathered in the Queensland capital Brisbane to rally against the lockdown and vaccine measures, the AAP news agency reported. Aside from a new non-infectious historic case reported on Friday, the state has recorded just one new active locally transmitted case in the last eight days. The number of Covid-19-related deaths in NSW is now up to 68 since 16 June, when the first infection in this outbreak was reported, and 124 since the beginning of the pandemic. Australia, with its 25 million inhabitants, was very successful in the fight against the pandemic for a long time because of extremely strict measures, including by keeping its international border closed with few exceptions since March 2020. However, a large proportion of the population is back in lockdown due to the spread of the Delta variant and an initially slow roll-out of vaccinations. Over 42,000 cases have been confirmed nationwide and over 970 people have died in connection with Covid-19.