NSW Covid update: greater Sydney hit with new restrictions as state announces 16 coronavirus cases
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Greater Sydney will be subject to a range of new restrictions including limits on visitors in the home and new travel rules after New South Wales premier Gladys Berejiklian announced 16 new Covid-19 cases on Wednesday.
Berejiklian said residents of seven local government areas in Sydney would also not be allowed to travel outside of the city as officials warned the Delta variant of the virus was proving particularly transmissible.
“I’m as worried right now as I have been at any time since January last year,” the NSW health minister Brad Hazzard said on Wednesday.
The new restrictions include a limit of five visitors to homes, the reintroduction of the more stringent social distancing rules in hospitality venues and indoor maskwearing at venues including workplaces.
The 16 new cases include nine people who attended a party in West Hoxton in south-west Sydney on Monday.
About 30 people attended the party, and NSW chief health officer Kerry Chant said all of them had been tested and were in isolation.
Among the positive cases from the party was a two-year-old child, who attended Little Zak’s childcare in Narellan Vale in the city’s south-west on 21 June.
“There is a particular family where a number of members of that family tested positive overnight,” Chant said.
The party was attended by a previously announced positive case, which is linked to the initial Bondi Junction cluster. Chant said the original positive case did not have any symptoms when he attended the party, and got tested the next day as soon as they developed.
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Chant said she believed he was probably “infectious in the community for one day”.
Little Zak’s Academy announced on social media that it had closed for deep cleaning after a positive case was returned on Tuesday night.
“The girl and her family are doing well and resting at home,” the preschool said. “As always, Little Zak’s Academy is taking additional precautionary measures to ensure all rooms and play areas are thoroughly sanitised.”
It came as Queensland followed Victoria in slamming its border shut to the state, with the premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announcing a swathe of local government areas in greater Sydney would be declared “hotspots”. They included the City of Sydney, the inner west, Woolhara, Bayside, Canada Bay and Randwick.
The state’s chief medical officer, Dr Jeanette Young, said the decision had been made out of concern about the transmissibility of the Delta variant of the virus.
“There’s well over 120 exposure venues and unfortunately, with the Delta variant, we’re seeing very fleeting contact leading to transmission,” she said.
“If you remember at the start of this pandemic, I spoke about 15 minutes of close contact being a concern. Now, it looks like it’s five to 10 seconds that’s a concern. So it’s just the risk is so much higher now than it was only a year ago.”
It came after Victoria announced it would close its borders to the same areas, as well as Waverley, which Queensland had already declared a hotspot.
Young also confirmed a leak had occurred within the state’s hotel quarantine system earlier this month, saying genome sequencing had shown two people staying at the Brisbane Airport Novotel had caught the virus from another person staying in an adjacent room.
“That person in the room adjacent tested positive first and then two days later, the couple, or the two people in the adjacent room tested positive,” she said.
“And at the time we thought it was just overseas acquired. But now that I’ve got the genome sequencing back, it’s clear that the first person has given it to the other two people.”
Young said she had extended the quarantine of people currently staying on that floor of the hotel, while about 30 other people who had previously stayed there have been contacted by Queensland Health.