110 new cases in NSW as Victoria extends lockdown
New South Wales yesterday recorded 110 new locally acquired Covid-19 cases as Victoria extended its lockdown until Tuesday.
New Zealand extended its travel pause with Australia as a result.
Of yesterday’s new community cases in NSW, 43 were infectious while in the community and 54 were linked to a known cluster, while the source of infection for 56 cases is under investigation.
“Now, I want to stress that you might not have any symptoms and not know you have the virus and still be infectious,” NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said at a press conference yesterday.
“Those 43 people haven’t necessarily done the wrong thing.
“But what it does show is how infectious and contagious the virus is, so it means that every time you have contact with another human being you risk either getting the virus or passing the virus on.”
It comes after an infectious disease expert warned Sydney may never hit zero community transmission again because of how fast the Delta variant spreads.
“There are various pathways we may head down over the coming weeks and months . . . and I hope we do get back to zero transmission but it may not be feasible,” Professor Greg Dore, an epidemiologist with the Kirby Institute, said.
“The Delta variant is different . . . once it’s well established in the community and once you’ve got several hundred active cases in the community it will be tougher, and we’re getting 30 to 40 cases a day that are not in home quarantine.
“Even though we’re under lockdown there are opportunities for those people to pass the virus on.”
The Premier also had a stark message as vaccine rates remain low, saying NSW “won’t be able to live freely unless we quash this outbreak”.
“Our vaccination rates are so low and yet we’ve done really well in stemming the growth of the virus,” she said.
“What we need to do now is quash it, because with the vaccine rates the way they are, we won’t be able to live freely and safely unless we’re able to quash this outbreak.”
In Victoria, Premier Daniel Andrews announced yesterday that lockdown would continue until at least Tuesday, July 27. Victoria yesterday recorded 22 new locally acquired Covid-19 cases, all of which were linked to known clusters.
“We wish we could bring this in earlier, but we can’t run the risk that there are cases out there that we don’t know about,” he said.
“There are changes of transmission that are not yet contained that we don’t know about and if we would open up we would see how quickly this runs, we see how challenging this can become in a very short space of time.”