Photographer: Lisa Maree Williams / Bloomberg
Photographer: Lisa Maree Williams / Bloomberg
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Sydney’s five million residents are urged to halt activities over the next few days to prevent the prevention of a coronavirus outbreak that closes state borders and threatens to escape the Christmas holidays.
A new health order from Monday limits meetings in homes and leisure venues in the metropolitan city of Sydney for at least three days, while health officials in the state of New South Wales are working to track down the source and contain a growing group involving 83 people.
“We’re on a precipice,” he said Marylouise McLaws, Professor of Epidemiology, Hospital Infection and Infectious Disease Control at the University of New South Wales. A seven-day order in Sydney may be needed to “stay home” to stop the spread of the virus, and it would be prudent for residents to reduce the holiday festivities if they did not cancel them altogether, he said.
An empty Wynyard station in Sydney on 19 December. Authorities are still trying to identify the source of the Sydney cluster.
Photographer: James D. Morgan / Getty Images
Raina MacIntyre, a global biosafety professor at the university, said Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve pose significant risks to greater transmission as people move through the suburbs and hold family reunions.
“If we don’t avoid this chain of events, we could examine thousands of cases in January,” he said, adding that face masks should be mandatory in confined indoor spaces, such as malls.
Australia has been at the forefront of nations that have managed to suppress SARS-CoV-2 transmission in the past, keeping the total number of Covid-19 cases reported at less than 29,000, including 908 fatalities, since the start of the pandemic. It does so through rigorous testing and tracking of contacts, and through the closure of the international border, with all travelers returned abroad forced to isolate themselves for 14 days in quarantine hotels.
Authorities are still trying to identify the source of the Sydney cluster, but previous outbreaks in the states of Victoria and South Australia were linked to breaches in quarantine hotels that saw the virus leak into the community.
Fifteen locally acquired cases of Covid-19 were reported on Monday, all related to the cluster in Avalon, in the Northern Beaches area of Sydney, said New South Wales State Prime Minister Gladys Berejiklian. But they have visited possible coronavirus carriers dozens of places in Sydney, worried that the virus could be widely distributed in Australia’s most populous city.
Tasmania, Queensland, Victoria and South Australia imposed border restrictions and quarantine measures to prevent travelers from the metropolitan city of Sydney or surrounding areas from spreading the virus, while Western Australia restricted entry to anyone in New Wales. those of the South.
Shares of Australian travel and leisure companies fell amid news of border restrictions and concerns that a wider closure in Sydney could reduce summer holiday plans. Qantas Airways Ltd., which had been adding flights to and from Sydney in the run-up to Christmas, fell to 6.3%, while Flight Center Travel Group Ltd. it sank to 7.1%.
Australian travel stocks fell amid a Sydney virus outbreak
Victoria, which has not reported that there have been community-acquired Covid-19 cases for 51 days, will deploy 700 police officers at border checkpoints, Prime Minister Daniel Andrews said.
Sydney’s Covid Hotspot Spurs block northern beaches
Without singing
Family reunions in the metropolitan city of Sydney are limited to 10 visitors until 23:59 on Wednesday at least, according to the New South Wales health department. Indoor spaces, including hotels and places of worship, are limited to one person for every 4 square meters (43 square feet), with a maximum of 300 people. Singing and singing in covered venues is also prohibited.
Home stay orders for about 250,000 residents in the local government area of the northern beaches will also continue through Wednesday at midnight. The region includes the popular coastal suburb of Manly and Palm Beach, where the Australian television soap opera “Home and Away” has been filmed since 1988.
On Wednesday, a “crisis cabinet” will decide whether the northern beaches will face a Christmas closure, State Health Minister Brad Hazzard told Australian Broadcasting Corp. on Monday. Sydney continues to make progress on its New Year’s Eve plans, but reviewed the situation on a daily basis, he said.
– With the assistance of Angus Whitley, Tim Smith, Matthew Burgess and Jason Scott
(Updates with the latest infections)