MANDATED mask-wearing in indoor settings is unlikely to change at least until Sydney's COVID outbreak is under control, Hunter public health physician Dr David Durrheim says.
Thousands of tests and sewage surveillance have found no sign of the virus in Newcastle and the Hunter, despite Sydney recording 35 new locally-acquired cases.
Dr Durrheim said the Hunter had been "very lucky", but the high testing numbers also reflected that the community had been "doing the right thing".
"The number of trips down the highway have drastically reduced, which is very good to see," he said. "The testing rates are phenomenal, and we encourage people to keep that up. We want to detect any occurrence of the virus as quickly as possible."
Across Hunter New England, there were 27,900 COVID tests in the week ending July 4; up from 8461 tests in the week ending May 16.
"It is a real shout out to the community that they are not ignoring even the mildest of symptoms and are taking this seriously. A big thank you for their patience, because we know the queues have been long, but this is all part of our contribution to making sure we don't allow COVID to again circulate in our community.
"It is reassuring the sewage surveillance has found no detects. But we also know that just down the M1, not everybody in Sydney is as compliant as they need to be for us to get on top of this.
"In some sections of Sydney it has been quite difficult for the contact tracers to nail down where exposures have been, so it is important we don't drop the ball.
"We're not through this battle just yet."
It follows the news two men from Liverpool were fined $1000 each after police stopped their car in Port Stephens on Sunday.
The men, 24 and 26, both received fines for breaching the stay at home direction, and failing to wear masks.
A new pop-up COVID-19 testing clinic has been opened by Laverty Pathology at Gateshead. The free drive-through clinic is based at Harold Knight Oval - just off the Pacific Highway, with access via Willow Road.
It will be open Monday to Friday from 7.30am to 3.30pm.
Dr Durrheim said the lessons from this latest outbreak would not be readily forgotten.
He "would not be surprised" if mandatory mask-wearing continued for now - or at least until Sydney's outbreak was under better control.
"The additional value of the masks provide us with, at this point in the pandemic, another important contributor to keeping us safe," he said. "I'd be very surprised if mask wearing mandates weren't kept in place for longer."
