The Sydney Covid-19 saga continues, with cases rising to 68 overnight following an infection cluster that originated in the northern beaches.
NSW health minister Brad Hazzard told ABC TV earlier today that “health authorities are still investigating how the virus spread from the US to the northern beaches”.
“We know a woman got off a flight from Los Angeles on 1st December. She went straight into hotel quarantine but her genomic sequencing indicates it is extremely close to the strain of the virus that is circulating on the northern beaches.
“She is certainly a person that we have got to look more closely at. How could it have possibly got from her to the beaches when she is still in a quarantine hotel? It is a human system,” he said asking people to accept this is a human system.
“If someone picked up a bag by mistake and then put it down, it could be anything that she might have handled. It just could be anything at all on that front. We don’t know the answer at this point. I am a northern beaches resident and looking around the area yesterday, the only people who were out in great numbers were people getting tested. That is a big positive. I am expecting big numbers today, possibly the biggest ever in terms of the number of people getting tested. They have been out in massive force.”
New information regarding the start of the spread suggests that Sydney’s Covid-19 outbreak may be linked to an exemption to hotel quarantine given to a traveller returning from overseas, yet this has not yet been confirmed.
On that note, shadow Health Minister Ryan Park told the Sydney Morning Herald that the “reasons given for the exemptions should be transparent when you are dealing with an outbreak”.
New South Wales grants quarantine exemptions in cases where there are “strong medical, health or compassionate grounds, or the person is transiting out of NSW to an international destination”, he explained.
While government says exemptions are “rarely granted”, there have recently been some high-profile exemptions entering Australia, including Hollywood actor Mark Wahlberg.
At this stage, borders have been closed to Sydneysiders, however, more people than ever before fled Sydney to other states of Australia in order to ensure a lockdown-free holiday.
The number of people that could have potentially been infected and remain asymptomatic is unknown at this stage. Some of the people that made it out of Sydney before border closure could have been in the Northern Beaches hotspots.
We are yet to see how this new coronavirus outbreak will pan out as for many, symptoms may start to appear on Christmas which could mean more clusters being created by New Years Eve, as people gather to celebrate the festive season.
NSW Health is strongly recommending people in NSW wear a mask at all times when in indoor areas, including shopping centres, public transport, healthcare facilities and aged care facilities.
Meanwhile, Queensland has recorded one new overseas acquired COVID-19 case. Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk tweeted case brings the state’s active cases to 10 after just over 4,000 tests were performed in the past 24 hours.
Finally, in a historic first, the swearing-in ceremony for Scott Morrison’s new cabinet will be conducted virtually tomorrow, AAP reported. Governor general David Hurley will conduct the swearing-in by video conference from Canberra on Tuesday.