Hopes dashed
Sydney restrictions to stay for Christmas
Greater Sydney will celebrate Christmas under varying levels of coronavirus restrictions after eight new cases of community transmission were recorded yesterday.
Premier Gladys Berejiklian said yesterday that the majority of restrictions in place across Greater Sydney will remain, with only a few changes to be implemented.
On December 24, 25 and 26, people in Greater Sydney will be able to have 10 people into their homes.
“Please make sure that it’s only one group to your house in Greater Sydney,” Berejiklian said.
“You can’t mix groups. You can’t have different rosters, having onehalf of the family in the morning and the other half in the evening. Not possible.”
“Every other restriction” will remain in place over the Christmas period, she said.
Part of the northern part of the Northern Beaches will remain in lockdown over the next few days, with a new boundary to be implemented in the area.
Berejiklian said there were two distinct parts of the Northern Beaches, with the northern part of the area labelled the “epicentre” of the Covid-19 cluster.
“For the people of the northern part of the Northern Beaches, you cannot, unfortunately, move outside of your community, outside of that boundary. You cannot accept anybody who were outside that boundary into your boundary but you can accept five people from within that community,” Berejiklian said.
Meanwhile, NSW may refuse to accept interstate residents returning from overseas for hotel quarantine, as anger grows towards other states for slamming their borders shut over the Northern Beaches outbreak.
Every state and territory has now implemented varying levels of restrictions on NSW residents, throwing travel plans into chaos for millions of Australians days before Christmas and prompting outrage from Berejiklian.
NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro flagged the possibility of
We make sure the decisions we take consider the eight million people in the state, and not just particular groupings in one place or another.
Gladys Berejiklian,
New South Wales Premier
forcing other states to take their own residents for hotel quarantine, amid frustration in the government that NSW bears the brunt of the risk.
“We’ll have plenty of notice, we’ll know who’s coming in and we could organise a commercial or charter flight,” Barilaro told The Australian newspaper.
Berejiklian on Tuesday slammed her counterparts for causing “suffering” to NSW residents, and raised the hotel quarantine issue.
“We know the infection rates are going up overseas,” she told reporters.
“We don’t stand here and tell you how many were Queenslanders or Victorians. I do feel NSW has done more than its fair share and I ask other states to do the same and I look forward to other states stepping up.”
Berejiklian said when NSW made decisions on imposing restrictions, it considered not just the health impacts “but societal impacts, what it means for the greater population — you have to assess the medical risk against the risk of other things which will harm the community”.
“That’s why we waited until Victoria had consistently 140, 120, 180 cases a day before we closed our border,” she said. “That was a big step we took. We make sure the decisions we take consider the eight million people in the state, and not just particular groupings in one place or another.”
NSW Health officials have placed 140,000 residents across 36 new suburbs on high alert after the sewage surveillance programme detected traces of the virus on the state’s Central Coast.
The region also has one positive case, as well as another case from western Sydney who visited Avoca Beach recently.
The virus was detected at a treatment plant in Kincumber serving the Gosford area on Monday, NSW chief health officer Dr Kerry Chant confirmed yesterday.
Although no venues on the Central Coast were listed by NSW Health in relation to those two positive cases, Chant said officials were taking precautions.
“We are aware that there is a Covidpositive case in the Central Coast as well as a case from western Sydney who visited Avoca while infectious last weekend, so there is an explanation for this but we want to take a cautious approach,” Chant said.
“Please be on high alert and get tested if you've got the most minimal of symptoms.”