NSW records 22 new locally-acquired coronavirus cases as four Sydney areas put into lockdown

Residents and visitors to the eastern suburbs get tested for COVID-19 at St Vincents Hospital pop-up testing clinic at Bondi Beach in Sydney. Source: AAP

Twenty two new locally-transmitted coronavirus cases have been recorded in NSW as health authorities announced a stay-at-home order for four Sydney local government areas.

People who live or work in the Woollahra, Waverley, Randwick, and City of Sydney local government areas will be required to stay at home “unless absolutely necessary” for seven days.

Permitted reasons to leave home include for work or education – if you cannot work or study from home – for outdoor exercise in groups of 10 or fewer, for health care and to care for others, and to buy essential goods.

The stay-at-home order will come into force from 11.59pm on Friday, as NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian flagged there were likely to be more cases in the coming days.

“Previously, you may have had one or two other members of a household getting the virus, but because this is a contagious strain, we anticipate that close to 100 per cent of … a household is likely to get the virus if one person has had positive test results,” she said.

“We also appreciate, given the patterns of behaviour that we’ve seen, that many workers, unfortunately, who are face-to-face with a number of clients during the day have also been transmitting the virus.”

Current restrictions on number of guests at home, compulsory masks, and capacity limits for the wider Greater Sydney region will also be extended until midnight on Friday.

The Commonwealth has extended its hotspot declaration for the City of Sydney, Waverley, Bayside, Canada Bay, Inner West and Randwick to cover the same time period, paving the way for eligible Sydneysiders affected by restrictions to access COVID-19 disaster payments.

The official case tally for Friday was 11 infections, including six that were previously announced. An additional 17 cases were recorded after the 8pm cut off and will be included in Saturday’s numbers.

There are now 65 cases linked to the so-called Bondi cluster.

The five newly-reported cases in Friday’s numbers include a man in his 30s, a woman in her 30s, and their child, a woman in her 80s from Sydney’s eastern suburbs, and a man in his 20s from the Sutherland Shire who is a close contact of a previously reported case.

Fourteen of the 17 cases identified after the 8pm cut off are linked to known cases, while three are under urgent investigation.

Health authorities said there were “significant concerns” around transmission at Joh Bailey hairdressing salon in Double Bay as at least three staff members had worked while infectious. Two clients have tested positive to the virus so far and anyone who visited the salon between June 15 and 23 are being urged to isolate.

“What we’re concerned [about] is the over 900 clients that attended, or potentially are contacts, may have acquired the infection,” Chief Medical Officer Kerry Chant said on Friday.

“We are going to see larger numbers of cases.”

A positive case identified on Thursday who attended two gyms while infectious – Fitness First Platinum and Fitness First in Bondi Junction – is also cause for concern, she said.

“There will be things that come up in the next little while that none of us had anticipated and we will have to react and respond,” Ms Berejiklian said.

“We are not ever going to pretend that what we have in place is enough, or what we have in place is perfect. Far from it.

“But what is important is that if we find a situation we need to fix, or find a set of circumstances we need to deal with, we are not afraid to do that.”

The NSW government’s crisis cabinet met on Friday morning, before the new case numbers were released.

It came after a man who contracted the virus at a party in West Hoxton, near Liverpool in west Sydney, and his colleague tested positive to the virus in Melbourne.

SBS