New South Wales yesterday imposed tight restrictions to curb a fast-growing Covid-19 outbreak in Sydney, as New Zealand and other states in Australia closed their borders to arrivals from the country's most populous state.
As the city's "Bondi cluster" increased by 16 cases to 31, the New South Wales government restricted travel for residents of specified zones in Sydney, limited household gatherings to five guests only, and made mask wearing mandatory inside shops and offices and at outdoor events.
State Premier Gladys Berejiklian warned she could not rule out imposing a full-scale lockdown.
"The New South Wales government will not hesitate to go further and harder if we have to," she told Parliament yesterday.
"I really want the public to be prepared. We've not experienced this level of transmissibility in this variant previously."
The authorities are concerned because the outbreak involves the highly contagious Delta variant and has resulted in infections caused by apparently fleeting cases of physical contact.
The main superspreader event was a birthday party in Sydney on Monday that was attended by 30 people, 10 of whom have tested positive, including a two-year-old. At least one other case is believed to have been transmitted when two people passed each other in a department store.
The new curbs, which will last for a week from 4pm yesterday, include a 50 per cent capacity at outdoor seated events and a ban on dancing at indoor venues except for weddings, where a 20-person limit applies. The rules apply to Sydney, the nation's largest city, as well as the surrounding region, including the city of Wollongong.
Victoria and Queensland have barred arrivals from designated zones in and around Sydney, while Western Australia and South Australia shut their borders to all arrivals from NSW.
New Zealand, which has a quarantine-free travel bubble with Australia, imposed a 72-hour ban on travel to and from NSW from midnight on Tuesday.
Australia has largely avoided large-scale lockdowns since an initial one in March last year, relying instead on a mix of targeted curbs, limited lockdowns, mass testing and swift contact tracing.
However, Melbourne, the capital of Victoria, has instituted several lockdowns after a series of quarantine breaches.
The Sydney outbreak comes on the heels of a recent cluster in Melbourne that led to a city-wide lockdown. Victoria has recorded three local cases in the past week.
In contrast to the effective Australian public health response, the country's vaccination roll-out has been slow. Just 2.8 per cent of the nation's 25.7 million residents are fully vaccinated, and 24 per cent have received a first dose.
The federal government said yesterday that it would replace the controversial AstraZeneca vaccine, which now dominates the country's inoculation programme, by October, when supplies from Pfizer and Moderna become more widely available.
The current Sydney outbreak began when a driver for an overseas airline crew became infected and travelled across the city, including to the busy Westfield shopping centre near Bondi Beach. The centre has since turned into a ghost town, with retailers reporting a more than 70 per cent plunge in sales.
New South Wales Health Minister Brad Hazzard has urged the public to wear masks and follow the new health rules, warning that the Delta variant was spreading dangerously quickly.
