Greater Sydney lockdown extended after 97 new COVID-19 cases
Greater Sydney faces at least two more weeks of lockdown, after 97 new cases of locally acquired cases were reported.
Of those, 24 cases were infectious while in the community. That is the key number Premier Gladys Berejiklian said she needs “as close to zero as possible” before there is any hope of ending the lockdown.
Ms Berejiklian said home learning for hundreds of thousands of school children would continue for at least another two weeks, while warning she had no “crystal ball”.
The premier also said government mobility data, which was being used to calculate likely lockdown periods, showed too much movement was occurring in the Canterbury Bankstown and Liverpool areas.
“We will know at the end of two weeks to what extent we need to extend the lockdown, whether there is any chance of face-to-face schooling ending,” Ms Berejiklian said
The current lockdown settings for what people can and can’t do won’t change.
“I appreciate people are stressed and upset about what is going on, myself included,” she said.
The vast majority of cases are being detected in south-west Sydney, with areas of most concern including Fairfield, Roselands, Rosebery, Canterbury, Belmore, Sutherland Shire, the St George area, Windsor, St Ives, Penrith and Bayside.
Mobility data for Sydney showed movement inside the Fairfield LGA had tapered off considerably.
However, Ms Berejiklian said the same data showed too many people were moving around in the neighbouring Canterbury-Bankstown and Liverpool Council areas.
That was backed up by NSW Police, with NSW Police Deputy Commissioner Gary Worboys who said 201 coronavirus restriction tickets had been written in the last 24 hours, “the vast majority not in south-west Sydney”.
Data on mobility and movement was a “key metric” informing NSW Health’s coronavirus modelling, and lockdown calculations.
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“There are various different models,” NSW Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry explained, when asked whether government modelling was showing a two-week lockdown extension would be sufficient.
“What I can say to the community is that we need to decrease our movements, particularly in the areas of south-western Sydney and Canterbury Bankstown, St George, Sutherland, that sort of area.”
Dr Chant defended the decision to keep Wollongong and the Blue Mountains locked down, despite no community transmission in those regions.
“What we know is that there are mobile workforces across the whole of Greater Sydney,” she said.
“We are concerned that you can get seeding so until we reduce the burden of the disease in Greater Sydney, we are really still concerned with the mobility, the way workers move around.”
When asked by reporters if the NSW lockdown was too soft, compared to Victoria, Ms Berejiklian said it was foolhardy to “compare apples and oranges” and that Sydney was fighting the highly-transmissible Delta variant.
Victoria imposed much stricter health orders to stop movement when it faced multiple outbreaks.
Dr Chant said 70 of today’s cases are from the south-western Sydney local health district, with “most” in the Fairfield LGA.
There are now 71 COVID-19 patients in hospital, with 20 in intensive care.
Of the 21 people in ICU, five are aged under 50.
New guidelines announced yesterday has put intense pressure on testing stations in Fairfield.
This morning 9News filmed queues of cars stretching for kilometres, with Fairfield residents experiencing waits of more than five hours.
Ms Berejiklian acknowleged there had been major problems at Fairfield COVID-19 testing sites, and offered an apology, but she did not accept responsibility for the chaotic scenes.
She also rejected assertions she had imposed a lockdown on Sydney too late, leading to a lockdown which will now run for at least five weeks.
Mr Worboys said it was “a very challenging situation” last night at Fairfield around those testing centres.
Some experts have predicted the lockdown, now in week three, could last for two months.
Cases have climbed as the Delta variant has swept through households, particularly in Sydney’s south-west.
Health officials are concerned about a possible spread into regional NSW, with a fresh case detected yesterday in Goulburn, 200 kilometres south-west of Sydney.
That development led a raft of tough new testing measures focused on Fairfield, in Sydney’s south-west, and essential workers travelling outside of Greater Sydney.
