NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has announced a further tightening of COVID-19 restrictions for NYE as 18 new community transmissions are detected overnight.
Greater Sydney, Wollongong, Central Coast and Blue Mountains households will now only be allowed to have 5 visitors (including children) and outdoor gatherings will be limited to 30 people.
The southern section of the Northern Beaches will also only be allowed to have 5 visitors (including children) per household.
Restrictions for the northern section of the Northern Beaches remain the same.
All residential aged care facilities must exclude all visitors until 11.59pm 6 January.
“We don’t want New Year’s Eve to be the cause of a super-spreader,” said Ms Berejiklian.
“The strongest message to everybody across NSW no matter where you are is please limit your activity and your mobility.”
Overnight, 18 new cases were detected from 17,267 tests.
Nine of the cases are linked to the Avalon cluster, six are linked to a new Croydon cluster, two are from Wollongong and one is from North Sydney.
Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry stated that the Croydon cluster is expected to grow in the Inner West.
“We are expecting that there will be additional cases linked to that cluster just because of the number of close contacts and the close household contact that a number of those contacts had over the period of Christmas and the preceding days,” Dr Chant said.
Dr Chant urged people to continue testing.
“I can’t stress enough as the Premier has indicated, the higher the rates of testing, the greater assurance we have that we are not missing ongoing chains of transmission,” said Dr Chant.
“We may not be able to perfectly map out the transmission chains that have occurred before, we are doing our utmost to determine and detect and link all of those cases, but we may not be able to.
“But what is most important at the moment is that we break all current chains of transmission. And that is the basis for the limiting the household visitor numbers.”
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