NSW Premier Gladys Berjeklian reported in today's media briefing, July 23, another consistently high number of positive cases of 136 and an 89 year old man's death. There was a record number of 87,000 testing done in the last 24 hours. Both Premier Berjeklian and Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant stated that they consider the COVID situation a national emergency.
In terms of the use of Pfizer or Aztra Zeneca, NSW Premier said:
“We need to have a strategy at national cabinet that does think about the options for getting more jabs in arms in Sydney,” Ms Berejiklian said.
“We have been doing the heavy lifting for 18 months and if I may, we have tried to make sure that we keep the economy going, and we want to continue to do that. But in order for us to have our citizens live freely and openly, as well as other states to ensure that their citizens live openly and freely, we need to have a national refocus.”
The NSW premier has announced stricter lockdown restrictions for greater Sydney, including residents in the Fairfield, Canterbury-Bankstown and Liverpool local government areas, as well as the Central Coast, Blue Mountains and Wollongong, are in place until 30 July. Two local government areas in Sydney’s west will also be locked out from the rest of the city in an attempt to contain the Delta variant of Covid-19. Residents of Cumberland Shire and Blacktown will be prohibited from leaving their suburbs unless they are health or emergency workers, or are otherwise deemed “essential”.
Lockdown restrictions also apply to the Blayney, Cabonne and Orange local government areas in the central west of the state as of Wednesary 21 July.
The Premier has indicated that the easing of restrictions would only be considered when zero new COVID cases have been achieved.
The restrictions during the lockdown involve a 'stay at home' rule. The following are what are considered to be A reasonable excuse to leave home, if you need to:
- obtain food or other goods and services
- for the personal needs of the household or for other household purposes (including pets)
- for vulnerable people
- leave home to go to work if
- leave home for education if it is not possible to do it at home
- exercise and take outdoor recreation within your local government area or up to 10km from your home.
- go out for medical or caring reasons, including obtaining a COVID-19 vaccination.
For a complete list of other reasonable excuse to leave home, check out:
https://www.nsw.gov.au/covid-19/rules/greater-sydney#other-reasonable-excuses