Greater Sydney’s lockdown has been extended for four more weeks, until August 28, including across the Blue Mountains, Shellharbour, the Central Coast and Wollongong.
Several additional restrictions have also been added to the existing settings in a bid to slow the spread of the Delta strain.
- Three more LGAs have been added to the list of hotspots: Parramatta; Campbelltown; and Georges River. If you live within these LGAs, or within the five other LGAs already identified (Fairfield, Canterbury-Bankstown, Liverpool, Blacktown and Cumberland), you must not leave your LGA unless you are an authorised worker: you can view a full list of all those professions here. All essential workers leaving these areas for work must submit for surveillance testing every three days.
- Across Greater Sydney, you must not travel outside of your LGA or beyond 10km from your home for essential shopping.
- Single people living alone may now establish a ‘singles bubble’, allowing one nominated individual to visit them in their home. If you live within a hotspot LGA, your singles bubble must be with someone else who lives in that LGA. Outside of the hotspot LGAs, your singles bubble must be with someone who lives within 10km of your home.
For a full breakdown of all the current lockdown rules, read our handy explainer.
Additionally, the premier announced that outside of the eight hotspot LGAs, non-occupied construction could continue, and “contactless tradies” could visit private or occupied premises if they could guarantee there would be no contact with residents.
Within the hotspot LGAs, to allow HSC exams to go ahead as planned, supplies of Pfizer originally intended for regional NSW will be redirected to vaccinate Year 12 students as a priority.
NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian said that the federal government had declined to extend JobKeeper support to NSW, but that the Commonwealth had offered some additional funds to support the state's disaster payments for individuals and businesses.
Dr Kerry Chant, the state’s chief medical officer, said that Sydneysiders needed to “hold the course” of the lockdown measures. “Lockdown measures work. But we also have tools that we didn’t have before, and those tools are vaccinations.” On July 27, the state announced that pharmacies and vaccination hubs would start offering AstraZeneca to all adults aged over 18. Chant also highlighted that protection from the first dose of vaccine could take up to three weeks to develop, so getting the jab sooner rather than later should be every Sydneysider's priority.