Sydney to ease curbs for inoculated

Those who shunned jabs may have to wait until December

Australian authorities announced plans yesterday to gradually reopen locked-down Sydney, unveiling a two-tiered system that will give citizens inoculated for Covid-19 more freedoms than their unvaccinated neighbours for several weeks.

Movement restrictions across New South Wales, the country’s most populous state and home to Sydney, will be lifted gradually between October 11 and December 1 as vaccination rates push through 70 per cent, 80 per cent and 90 per cent.

However, people who are not fully inoculated will be barred from joining the vaccinated to resume community sports, dining out, shopping and other activities until the final date.

“Unlike most cases in the world, if you are not vaccinated you will have to wait at least four or five weeks ... in order to participate in things that the rest of us can participate in,” state Premier Gladys Berejiklian said in a televised briefing.

Sydney, along with Melbourne and Canberra, has been in lockdown for several weeks. The three cities bore the brunt of a third Covid wave that has taken national case numbers to almost 100,000 - 68 per cent recorded since mid-June.