On the day New South Wales set a new daily record of 681 Covid-19 cases, the premier, Gladys Berejiklian, told locked-down residents across her state there are “exciting things to look forward to” when she introduces freedoms for vaccinated people once targets are met in coming weeks.
At the same time, Berejiklian announced the lockdown for all of regional NSW would be extended until at least 28 August, noting case numbers across the state “are not going where we want them to go”.
There were 25 new cases in western NSW, as well as three additional cases detected in Wilcannia overnight as authorities urged everyone in the majority Indigenous town to get tested and stay home.
A man in his 80s from south-east Sydney who had received one dose of Covid vaccine died in hospital, bringing the death toll for Sydney’s current outbreak to 61. The daily case record was broken for a third time in four days on Thursday, with 48 more cases compared with the previous reporting period.
Western and south-western Sydney were generating “the vast majority” of cases, with Merrylands, Guildford, Auburn, Granville, Lidcombe, Greenacre and Blacktown showing the fastest growth in infections.
Health authorities remained concerned about the movements of people while infectious – just 163 of the new cases reported on Thursday were isolating for all or part of their infectious period. As many as 518 cases were infectious in the community.
Despite the record number of cases, Berejiklian was eager to stress that freedoms would still be granted to residents who were vaccinated.
“NSW is up to 5.5m jabs. When we get to 6m jabs, those that are vaccinated will have the opportunity to do something that they can’t do now,” she said.
About 110,000 vaccine doses were administered in NSW on Wednesday.
“The quicker we can get to those targets, the quicker we can have freedoms and the quicker we can live life safely.”
Berejiklian repeatedly refused to provide specific details of what freedoms for vaccinated people could look like from September, and said chief health officer Kerry Chant was still formulating advice. More details are expected by 28 August.
Berejiklian acknowledged daily case numbers would influence what freedoms are granted, but insisted “there will be some freedoms, no matter what”.
“Those vaccination rates will be exciting things to look forward to, but they will also have to be measured against the case numbers and we certainly want case numbers to be lower than what they are now.”
Berejiklian acknowledged restrictions would still remain throughout September and October, but said she said she “can see the light at the end of the tunnel”.
“The next few weeks will be hard, but know that once we hit those high vaccination rates life will feel much better, life will look much rosier.”
About 53% of the NSW population has received one dose of Covid vaccination, with about 28% fully vaccinated.
Berejiklian said “every state is going to have to confront the prospect” that “we can’t live in our bubble forever”.
“Of course NSW, because of our situation, is confronting this challenge earlier than what we had hoped we would, but … every state has to live with the fact that once you get to 80% double doses and your population is allowed to live more freely, that the Delta variant will creep in.
“These are the difficult decisions that our nation has to deal with, but to assume that forevermore there will be zero cases around Australia is, I think, an assumption nobody can really make at this stage,” she said.
“We do need to coexist with Delta,” she said, later adding her state is in “uncharted territory as far as Australia is concerned”.
Meanwhile, Chris Minns, the NSW Labor opposition leader, has said he would support stricter lockdown measures if Chant gave such advice, saying “no one wants it but the alternative is too grim to bear at this point”.
“We can’t face a prospect of 2,000 daily cases. It would be too much of a stretch on our health system,” he said.
There are currently 474 people in NSW admitted to hospital with Covid, with 82 in intensive care and 25 on ventilation. Of the 82 people in intensive care, 71 have had no vaccine doses and 11 have had one dose.
Most of NSW’s cases continue to be in younger age brackets. Of the 681 cases announced on Thursday, 84 were aged under 10, 130 were aged between 10-19, 145 were in their 20s, 105 were in their 30s and 93 were in their 40s.
Police issued 671 penalty infringement notice for restrictions breached in the reporting period, with about 390 fined for people leaving home without a valid excuse.
Police had also arrested and refused bail to a man who was caught driving from his local Bondi area to south-west Sydney for the fourth time during the lockdown.
Also on Thursday, police announced its cybercrime squad was investigating 60 people booked for Covid-19 vaccines at Camperdown in Sydney that were “under allocations reserved for healthcare workers at the weekend”.
“Further inquiries revealed a link was shared with the attendees which allowed them to be allocated a vaccine despite being ineligible for priority bookings,” a police statement said.
