Outdoor group exercise is effectively banned, with a new limit of two people, under current restrictions in place from 5pm today on the Northern Beaches and throughout Sydney.
From 5pm today in Sydney (“Greater Sydney”), people will only be able to exercise in groups of two (or with their households) and can only exercise within 10km of their homes.
NSW recorded 44 locally acquired COVID-19 cases in the 24 hours to 8pm yesterday.
“We have only got 9% vaccination coverage. We cannot let this virus takes further foothold and lead to a exponential rise in cases,” Dr Chant said.
The new health orders from 5pm today will state the following:
From 5pm today (9 July) the following additional restrictions will be in place:
- Outdoor public gatherings limited to two people (excluding members from the same household)
- People must stay within their own Local Government Area (in our case the Northern Beaches) or within 10kms of home for exercise and outdoor recreation, with no carpooling between non-household members
- Browsing in shops is prohibited, plus only one person per household per day may leave the home for shopping.
- Funerals will be limited to 10 from 11 July.
Today’s Press Conference
Dr Kerry Chant and the Premier Gladys Berejiklian said it was simply not possible to “live with this”, referring to the Delta variant. “We have only got 9% vaccination coverage. We cannot let this virus takes further foothold and lead to a exponential rise in cases,” Dr Chant said. “It will have significant impacts in terms of health and well-being of our community. I would also just like to emphasise that we have currently got 43 people in hospital due to COVID. 10 people in ICU. Four of whom are ventilated. And we urge the community to follow the stay at home rules and the public health advice to protect themselves.”
The Premier said the following:
“I appreciate many in the community will think we have gone too far and some will think we have not gone far enough but what we need to do is rely on the health advice. And the health advice is based on the most recent data we have and I urge everybody to get out of your head please acknowledge we cannot live with this on the vaccination rate is only behind 9% no-one in my position will subject thousands and thousands of people to hospitalisation or death and I should also say equally, the economic impact will be devastating because if you think you can live with this and it goes wild in the community, nobody will be going to a restaurant or a bar when there are thousands and thousands of cases, thousands of deaths, no-one will want to leave their home.”
“So I want to stress that the economic impact of trying to live with this is as severe as the health impact. And we know the businesses would much prefer, and that is the feedback to us, would much prefer we stayed in lockdown until we need to so that we can have confidence that once we come out of lockdown, not only can we be assured of our health safety but also be assured of economics and business continuity.”
“So our response is as much based on our economic position as well as the health and safety. Health and safety is always obviously top of mind because if you don’t address the health and safety, you cannot address the economic consequences, but we understand and appreciate the economic consequences but – and the feedback from the vast majority of business leaders, small, medium and large, as they would much rather we get out of this with zero community transmission, live as normally as we can until higher rates of vaccination is here, and this is part of the roadmap in New South Wales.”
