New South Wales’s COVID lockdown has been extended for another week after the state recorded 27 new locally-acquired cases of COVID-19 from 8pm last night.
The lockdown, which began on 26 June, will be in place until midnight on Friday, July 16.
Restrictions will remain in place for Greater Sydney, the Blue Mountains, Shellharbour, Wollongong, and the Central Coast until Friday, July 16.
In the meantime, residents in these areas will only be allowed to leave home:
- To shop for food or other essential goods and services.
- For medical care or compassionate needs (including to get a COVID-19 vaccine).
- To exercise outdoors in groups of 10 or fewer.
- For essential work, or education, where you cannot work or study from home
“We only intend for this lockdown to be the only lockdown we go through,” Premier Gladys Berejiklian said on Tuesday. [Replace with/Add a quote from today’s press conference].
School students in Greater Sydney will attend school online next week and return to the classroom on Monday, July 19.
Students in regional New South Wales will return to face-to-face learning on Tuesday, July 13, as planned.
It was originally scheduled to end this Friday, July 9, but “the reason why the NSW government has taken this position is because we don’t want to be in a situation where we are constantly having to move between lockdown, no lockdown, lockdown, no lockdown,” Premier Berejiklian announced.
More than 330 locally acquired cases of COVID-19 have been recorded since mid-June.
Since then, hundreds of locations have been added to exposure site lists.
Source: ABC News