COVID-19 / Australia / 21st, 24th & 26th June Updates

So after 40 days free of new local infections, New South Wales, or more succinctly, Sydney has recorded at least 11 new cases and are known as the Bondi Cluster.

Contact venues are however spread across the city and surrounding local government areas.

Testing has been ramped up again across the region.
The state Premier yesterday mandated masks in several settings in Greater Sydney, the Blue Mountains and the Shellharbour and Wollongong local government areas.

We are not affected in the Shoalhaven.
Worryingly it is the extremely contagious Delta strain.
How did this happen?
Well, a driver whose job it is to drive international air crews from the airport to quarantine hotels became infected and passed it onto the community.
He was unvaccinated!

Yes really! 

The powers that be allowed this to happen. Unbelievable!

Meanwhile the vaccine rollout continues at a snail’s pace.

Around only 3% of the population is fully vaccinated.

Not only are vaccine supply lines in chaos but the health authorities have decided that the most available vaccine, AstraZeneca, is now not ‘safe’ for people under 60 due to the very rare blood clotting issue ie around 3 per 100,000 after first dose.

This has caused some panic for those who have already had their first shot and are now cancelling their second.

Talk about a fustercluck!

The alternative Pfizer vaccine is in very short supply and no one really knows when this will change.

Both of us are going ahead with the second AZ shot.

Update: 24th June 

NSW was on high alert after reporting 16 new locally acquired cases of COVID-19 in the Greater Sydney area on Wednesday, with 31 cases now linked to the Bondi cluster and others under investigation.
Any resident who lives or works in the seven council area hot spots is banned from travelling outside metropolitan Sydney for the next week, spoiling school holiday travel plans for thousands of families.

Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia reintroduced hard border closures for Greater Sydney and residents in the declared hotspots were banned from travel to Victoria.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has given her clearest indication that Sydney is on the brink of a lockdown.

With winter school holidays starting on the weekend and the inevitable influx of people from Sydney into our region, despite the travel ban, we will be once again going into self isolation.

Update: 26th June

A total of 80 cases are now linked to the Bondi cluster with 20 of these cases associated with a birthday party in western Sydney. There have now been 82 locally acquired cases since 16th June when the index case for the Bondi cluster, a driver who transported international flight crew, was reported. As a result of the now wide spread infections, NSW  Premier Gladys Berejiklian has announced a strict lockdown for all of Greater Sydney, the Blue Mountains, the Central Coast and Wollongong from 6pm Saturday until midnight Friday July 9.
Too little, too late?
We’ll just have to wait and see.
No cases in our area, the Shoalhaven, yet.
These are the lockdown conditions:
-Strict stay-at-home orders will apply to all people in the Greater Sydney including Blue Mountains, Central Coast and Wollongong from 6pm Saturday 26th June.
-The lockdown will remain in place until Friday July 9.Everyone in Greater Sydney must stay at home unless it is for an essential reason: shopping for essential goods, medical or compassionate needs, exercise outdoors in groups of 10 or less, essential work or education.
-Community sport will not be permitted during the lockdown.
-Weddings will not be allowed from 11.59pm, Sunday, while funerals will be limited to one person per four square metres, capped at 100 people. Masks will be compulsory while indoors.
-Anyone in regional NSW who has been in Greater Sydney since June 21 must self isolate from 14 days since they left Sydney.*
-Police will be using number plate recognition technology to monitor for vehicles from Greater Sydney.

*this is an VERY important condition as far as we are concerned.