The latest AP stories on COVID-19 outbreak in Australia and New Zealand:

About 55 per cent of New Zealanders have received at least one dose.New daily community cases have been decreasing and were down to 13 Thursday.

Parts of Australia's New South Wales state will come out of lockdown Saturday and the government plans to ease restrictions in Sydney once 70 percent of its residents aged 16 and older are fully vaccinated.

The government on Thursday outlined plans to ease restrictions in Sydney, which has been locked down since June, but it also warned that COVID-19 hospitalizations won't plateau until next month.

Coastal areas north of Sydney, the Murrumbidgee region south of the city, and the Riverina to the west will be released from the statewide lockdown Saturday.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian says Australia's most populous state will exit lockdown in a "cautious and staged" way as vaccination rates rise. In New South Wales, 43 percent of the population aged 16 and older is fully vaccinated.

--------------------- Wellington: New Zealand is buying an extra 250,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine from Spain as it tries to keep a surge in vaccination rates going during an outbreak of the coronavirus in Auckland.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says the doses will arrive Friday and she has also got a second, larger deal in the works with another country.

New Zealand was slow to get its vaccination rollout going but has been catching up to other developed since the outbreak of the delta variant began last month. About 55 percent of New Zealanders have received at least one dose.

New daily community cases have been decreasing and were down to 13 Thursday. Auckland remains in a strict lockdown and health authorities try to extinguish the outbreak entirely.