Greater Sydney is set to remain in lockdown for another week as New South Wales continues to attempt to control the growing Covid outbreak.

As The Guardian report, premier Gladys Berejiklian is expected to announce that existing restrictions will remain in place until midnight, Friday, July 16th. Sydney, the Blue Mountains, the Central Coast, Wollongong and Shellharbour were tapped to emerge from lockdown this Friday.

The decision to extend the current lockdown was reportedly made by the New South Wales government’s crisis cabinet committee after an extended meeting on Tuesday. The Guardian note that the the committee is devising a plan on how the state will come out of lockdown in 10 days time.

Prof Catherine Bennett, the chair of epidemiology at Deakin University, said ahat Berejiklian had no choice but to continue greater Sydney’s lockdown.

“I don’t think there is a choice now, the proportion of cases infectious in the community, even if just a day, is still sufficient to make it problematic,” Bennett said. “If you open up, and these people could be mixing in the community, you could get back very quickly to higher numbers.”

Berejiklian said that the extension of the lockdown is influenced by the fact the New South Wales government wanted this to be the state’s last. “We intend for this lockdown to be the only lockdown we go through,” she said.

Berejiklian praised the New South Wales contact tracers, but acknowledged that the Delta variant was “something new during the pandemic”. “It is not something we have seen before and that’s why it requires a different type of response.”

New South Wales reported 18 new local Covid cases on Tuesday, July 6th. Two of those cases were infectious in the community and five were partially in isolation.

Sydney’s list of covid exposure sites continues to grow. Anyone who attended the Commonwealth Bank at Roselands Shopping Centre during the following times is considered a close contact:

  • Between 8am and 5pm on Monday, June 28
  • Between 8am and 5pm on Tuesday, June 29
  • Between 8am and 3.30pm on Wednesday, June 30

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