New South Wales residents are waking up on Thursday to growing concerns they will be locked down as health authorities race to contain the swelling Bondi coronavirus cluster.
The ABC reports ‘stay at home’ orders look increasingly likely to be announced at the end of the week, with seven local government areas facing the toughest restrictions put into force since Christmas.
In a significant shift in her language late on Wednesday, Premier Gladys Berijiklien made it clear that lockdown would not be ruled out when she said the state was prepared to “go harder and tougher and further” with its restrictions.
Sydney’s list of close contact exposure sites grew again by Thursday morning. It now includes seven eateries and the popular Joh Bailey salon at Double Bay.
Late on Wednesday, NSW Health urged anyone who dined at Tropicana Cafe in Darlinghurst last Friday or visited Ikaria restaurant on Sunday to get tested and isolate for two weeks regardless of their result.
Tweet from @NSWHealth
The alert came after the Bondi cluster grew by 16 cases on Wednesday, prompting Ms Berejiklian to enact rules for residents in Greater Sydney, the Central Coast, Blue Mountains, Wollongong and Shellharbour.
Eight cases were at a birthday party attended by about 30 people in West Hoxton on Saturday, which NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant described as a “super-spreader event”.
Did Sydneysiders think they were safe?
ABC commentator Dr Norman Swan told Radio National on Wednesday morning that people in NSW were more complacent about the virus than Victorians.
“Really quite significant social distancing has got to occur, and we’ve been lulled into a false sense of security,” Dr Swan said.
“NSW has not experienced a second wave like Victoria, so … NSW people are not as respectful of this virus to the same extent Victorians are.”
Dr Swan’s comments sparked a backlash on social media, with some users pointing to NSW’s record of quashing outbreaks without hard lockdowns as proof that residents typically comply with public health measures.
‘Sydney’s not taking Covid seriously’. This is the QVB at 9am pic.twitter.com/wuTcOvbWAP
— Amber Robinson (@missrobinson) June 22, 2021
Damn right we don’t respect the virus, we slay it and get rid of it without locking down. Unlike Victoria that seems to give the virus a loving embrace, a warm place to live until it spreads and they have to lock down to get rid of it. https://t.co/wolstju1hs
— EvanZeneca (@fictillius) June 23, 2021
Is NSW more complacent about COVID than Victoria?
We need solid data to find out whether NSW is more complacent than Victoria when it comes to COVID-19, said Dr Holly Seale, an infectious diseases social scientist at the University of New South Wales.
“The challenge when we make a comment about how people are complying across Sydney is, we only see a snapshot of it,” Dr Seale told The New Daily.
“That’s been our danger during this pandemic. We do make assumptions of behaviours and of compliance with public health measures based on a small window of observations.”
However, Dr Seale conceded rates of hand hygiene practices had dropped before the current outbreak.
“That perception of risk had shifted in line with the fact there was very little community transmission up until a couple of weeks ago,” she said.
“People had reduced the vigilance of washing their hands and social distancing.”
Dr Seale said the NSW’s current outbreak would be “enough of a nudge” to make people switch back to complying with public health measures.
‘People aren’t really social distancing’
One Sydney resident, who lives in Randwick and wished to remain anonymous, told TND “people aren’t really social distancing – and haven’t been for some time”.
She suggested NSW’s strong contact-tracing team was the main reason people felt complacent about the virus, however that false sense of security was fading fast.
More and more people are coming forward to get tested, she said, pointing to a recent two-hour wait at a testing clinic in Bondi.
More than 44,600 tests were reported across the state on Wednesday.
It’s a swift change from NSW residents’ attitudes to testing last week, when numbers plummeted to about 26,600 on Saturday.
Bethan Yeoman, who lives in Bondi, has also noticed the promising trend.
“My local testing clinic was always abandoned prior to the outbreak,” Ms Yeoman told TND.
“No one was getting casual tests, but now the Bondi drive-through has been packed and people have been waiting for hours.
“It’s interesting to see how much this has exploded. My Instagram is flooded with my friends going to get their tests.”
The post NSW lockdown talk as residents hit back at claim they’re ‘not as respectful’ of COVID-19 appeared first on The New Daily.
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