Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been accused of double standards in his approach to the virus outbreaks taking place between states, favouring NSW in offering lockdown packages.

Mr Morrison announced on Tuesday that NSW workers would see their income support increased from $500 to $600 a week while business owners will be offered a cash-flow boost of up to $10,000.

The announcement caused Victorian officials to make comparisons with the May and June outbreaks in Victoria when federal members had said that state governments should take primary responsibility for the cost of lockdowns.

Mr Morrison on Wednesday morning said it was “just nonsense” to say that NSW has been favoured over Victoria.

“The numbers don’t bear it out,” he told Seven’s Sunrise.

“The Victoria lockdown went for two weeks. What happened in NSW is exactly what has happened in Victoria. It’s the same support provided by the Commonwealth to NSW and Victoria during the two-week period.

A Victorian government spokesman on Tuesday said the state had to “beg for every scrap of support” from the Federal Government during its latest outbreak just a few weeks ago.

“We were putting three-quarters of a billion dollars every single week into Victoria while they went through lockdown,” Mr Morrison told Today in reference to the two-week lockdown which took place in Victoria.

“NSW is going into week four of a lockdown and that means the challenges are escalating.

READ MORE: NSW records 112 cases of COVID-19 with increased calls for Melbourne-styled lockdown

“What I announced yesterday is exactly what every other state and territory would get in a week four of a lockdown.”

A Victorian government spokesman said in a statement that the state “had to shame the Federal Government into doing their job and providing income support for Victorian workers when we battled the Delta strain earlier this year. Their position at the time was a disgrace.”

Victoria on Wednesday recorded a new local case, known as a primary close contact, who had isolated during their infectious period.

One case was also confirmed while in hotel quarantine.

Authorities also added to exposure sites, with two new Tier 1 sites in Kalkallo, 30km north of Melbourne’s CBD. The sites are the Hungry Jacks and the Caltex station between 9.07am and 10.06am on 8 July.

The other four existing Tier 1 sites in Victoria are the Coles at Craigieburn Central, the Ariele Apartments complex in Maribyrnong, and a Mobil service station and McDonald’s in Ballan, about 80 km north-west of Melbourne.

Victoria’s COVID-19 response commander Jeroen Weimar on Tuesday was concerned that the two people who had initially tested positive had not been as “forthcoming” about their movements as authorities would have liked.

READ MORE: Victoria has one new case at a time of lockdowns around Australia

Chaos in Sydney

Cars yesterday lined up for hours in Fairfield, Sydney’s West, as people waited to get tested after the NSW state government on Tuesday announced new restrictions for essential workers to get tested every three days if they work outside the area.

NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet has apologised to the residents in the area following reports that symptomatic residents were turned away.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that one in three people in the state’s hospitals with COVID-19 is in intensive care as Sydney’s health system becomes the first to confront the latest wave of the Delta variant of COVID-19.

“We are seeing a more diverse group of patients this time, with a disproportionate number of younger patients in ICU,” St Vincent’s Hospital Emergency Ward Medical Director Dr Paul Preisz told the Sydney Morning Herald. “It just seems like nobody is safe.

“Last year we saw older patients with high blood pressure and other existing conditions but this time they are younger, with no medical problems. We are seeing a broader range of ages.”

But despite an influx of patients, Dr Preisz said the system was now better at managing the disease through life-saving treatments including the inexpensive steroid dexamethasone, oxygen management and the antiviral remdesivir.