AT least 82 people were infectious in the community among 199 cases detected in the 24 hours to 8pm on Monday evening.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said it was crucial that vaccine doses were focused in the eight local government areas subject to the strictest lockdown conditions and home to the most rampant spread.
NSW Health said 88 of the local cases are linked to a known case or cluster, 67 are household contacts and 21 are close contacts.
Hunter New England Health said there were no Hunter cases.
Transmission continues to centre around households and workplaces in Sydney.
"We don't know if it's peaked or if it's going to get worse," Ms Berejiklian said.
Ms Berejiklian said the government had been exploring incentives "for some time", and had wanted to make clear to Sydneysiders what life beyond lockdown could look like if vaccination and case numbers co-operated by the August 28 deadline.
"On the current rate that we're doing we should be able to get there with the jabs," she said.
"We're really focusing on what people really want at this stage," she said.
"They want certainty they can move around freely, send their kids to school, go to work.
"We believe based on experience overseas that allowing people extra movement or extra activity if they've been vaccinated is the greatest incentive of all."
Dr Kerry Chant urged people seeking vaccines to "keep ringing" in their efforts to get vaccinated, saying that pharmacies and other areas beyond Sydney's hot spots would eventually be options for those at the moment required to see a GP to access AstraZeneca.
"I don't want anyone turned away in southwestern Sydney, or anywhere," she said.
That comes after two days of rage in Newcastle and the Hunter, where more than 5000 bookings for Pfizer vaccines were cancelled after the doses were reallocated to Sydney to inoculate Year 12 students.
