Greater Sydney is currently under the tightest stay-at-home settings ever implemented in NSW, but as daily numbers of community cases have crept higher and higher, with a stubborn number of people still infectious in the community, questions over the ineffectiveness of these already strict measures continue to mount. The current lockdown rules will remain in effect until August 28, but premier Gladys Berejiklian has said on multiple occasions during recent press briefings that lifting restrictions will be dictated by the numbers – of both the rate of daily cases and the percentage of eligible adults vaccinated.
Right now, there is not a great deal of clarity about what freedoms might be returned first and when. There are, however, several clues – and some leaks from within the NSW government – that suggest several potential courses of action. Here we’ll take a look at the possible scenarios that could play out in Greater Sydney as we approach the end of August.
A harder lockdown
Federal chief medical officer Paul Kelly said at the press conference following the national cabinet meeting on August 6 that he had been encouraging the NSW government to consider an even harder “circuit breaker” lockdown in Greater Sydney, to bring down the number of people infectious in the community. NSW authorities have faced criticism for not locking down harder sooner. Instead, the Greater Sydney lockdown has been getting incrementally tighter, with reduced mobility measures, a more formalised singles bubble and an increase to police powers being the most recent additions to stay-at-home orders, announced on August 14.
While Greater Sydney's lockdown rules are already sweeping, there could be even more stringent measures introduced, such as curfews, allotting specific times for grocery shopping, and limiting the time allowed for outdoor exercise and recreation to one hour. Both the NSW premier and chief health officer Kerry Chant have resisted these extreme measures, citing a lack of evidence that they have a measurable impact on community transmission. Instead, an increase in punitive powers will allow the police to issue eye-watering on-the-spot fines of as much as $5000 for people found to be violating restrictions. To encourage people to remain in isolation while they are infectious, the state has also introduced lockdown payments of $320 for people awaiting a negative result.
Vaccination targets
Since Sydney went into lockdown at the end of June, there has been a shift in the state’s strategy away from reaching the previous objective of zero transmission. Given the rampant transmissibility of the Delta variant, it is entirely likely that NSW may never be able to reach total suppression again, which is why vaccination has been thrust to the frontlines of the state’s battle against the virus. On August 5, the premier stated that only once 6 million doses had been put into arms could restrictions begin to lift. That equates to about 50 per cent of eligible adults. However, the likelihood of lockdown rules being eased at the 50 per cent benchmark has been contradicted by the federal government's top health expert, Paul Kelly, the NSW chief medical officer, Kerry Chant, and the state's health minister Brad Hazzard, who have all said that 70 per cent of eligible adults would need to be fully immunised before any easing of lockdown rules could be considered. Current projections suggest this 70 per cent target could be achieved in NSW by the end of October, however, very few countries around the world, including those that have been administering vaccines for longer than Australia, have yet managed to get this percentage of eligible adults double jabbed.
Vaccination targets are also the backbone of the federal government’s four-phase roadmap out of the pandemic, with short, sharp lockdowns reserved only for extreme outbreaks resulting in hospitalisations and deaths, once 70 per cent of eligible adults in Australia are fully vaccinated. Vaccination is also a topic being hotly debated among business owners in Australia, with some already making public a ‘no jab, no entry’ policy, which could bar unvaccinated patrons. According to statistics compiled by Essential Research, just 11 per cent of people surveyed in NSW said they would never get vaccinated, while 65 per cent said getting vaccinated as soon as possible was a high priority and 24 per cent said they would consider vaccination, but not immediately. Nationally, vaccine hesitancy is around 20 per cent.
Localised lockdowns
Unlike Melbourne's second-wave lockdown, where there was a relatively even distribution of cases across Metropolitan Melbourne, the vast majority of Greater Sydney’s cases are being diagnosed in western and southwestern Sydney, in 12 hotspot LGAs. Elsewhere in the city, there are areas of very low or no community transmission. In details leaked to the Sydney Morning Herald, the state government is considering unlocking low-risk suburbs first, allowing businesses like gyms and hairdressers to resume, as well as outdoor dining. There are already stricter lockdown measures in place across the 12 hotspot LGAs, so it is at least conceivable that lockdown settings could be relaxed in other LGAs based on the amount of community transmission being detected.
But regaining any freedoms could require other protocols to be tightened, such as check-in technology. While hospitality venues have been pretty compliant in Greater Sydney about enforcing checking in, the current outbreak has revealed a blind spot when it comes to retail venues and supermarkets. The state government is now developing a check-in card, mainly aimed at the elderly who might not have access to a smartphone, but this could become a widely adopted standard, allowing shoppers to check in by tap, similar to an Opal card. Check-in cards will be available in NSW from August 31.