Australia?s Covid surge in four charts: NSW now has one of world?s highest infection rates

For the past two years, Australia has fought off waves of Covid using strict lockdowns and closed borders.

The payoff has been counted in the fatality rate - Australia has had one of the lowest rates of death anywhere in the world.

Over the past week, that story has started to change. Now, cases of Omicron are exploding around the country with the national tally hitting over 21,000 cases on Thursday and New South Wales recording that alone on Friday.

Here are four charts that show the extraordinary turnaround in case numbers:

Within about a couple of weeks, Australia has gone from having one of the lowest rates of new Covid cases per population anywhere in the world to being in the top 20 of countries with a population over 500,000. By the same measure if NSW were a country it would be sitting in the top 10.

While Australia's cases have been climbing, so too have those of other countries. On Wednesday, the US set a global record with 488,000 cases according to the New York Times database.

It's important to note that countries with better testing systems are inherently likely to produce higher figures - and even in Australia's case, it is clear that many positive cases are going unrecorded. Nevertheless, its position has changed extremely rapidly.