Cases of community transmission are on the rise in the Bayside, Burwood and Inner West LGAs, and harder lockdown settings could be introduced in these areas in the coming days, premier Gladys Berejiklian has warned.
There are already nine LGAs – Fairfield, Canterbury-Bankstown, Blacktown, Georges River, Liverpool, Penrith, Parramatta, Cumberland and Campbelltown – that have been classed as “areas of concern”. People living in these LGAs are not permitted to travel further than 5km from their home or leave the LGA unless they are an "authorised worker". These same measures could be introduced in Bayside, Burwood and the Inner West to prevent the Delta variant from spreading to the inner city, Berejklian said: “We don’t want to include [Bayside, Burwood and the Inner West] in the local government areas of concern, but we may have to if case numbers don’t at least stabilise or start going down. We are at a stage now when those decisions will be provided by health experts over the next few days if we do not see a decline in those areas, especially those parts that are close to those other areas of concern.”
The state’s chief health officer Kerry Chant said the suburbs that border the existing hotspot LGAs were particularly vulnerable to an increase of community transmission spreading, including Dulwich Hill, Marrickville, Enfield, Croydon Park, Bexley and Bardwell Park.