From Monday, all residents of Australia’s largest city will be required to wear masks when shopping, on public transport, in cinemas and casinos and places of worship.
Photographer: David Gray / AFP / Getty Images
Photographer: David Gray / AFP / Getty Images
Wearing masks in Sydney will become mandatory in most covered public premises as Australian health authorities struggle to get new groups of viruses that have disrupted the nation’s peak summer holiday period.
All residents of Australia’s largest city will be required to apply for masks from Monday when shopping, on public transport, in cinemas and casinos and at places of worship, Gladys Berejiklian, the new New Minister, told reporters on Saturday. South Wales, to Sydney journalists. People who violate the rule, which will also apply to Wollongong, the central coast and the Blue Mountains, will be fined $ 200 ($ 154), he said.
New South Wales added seven new locally acquired cases in the last 24 hours, increasing the size of a cluster originally confined to the Northern Beaches region of Sydney, which spread to other areas of the city and which it has now infected more than 150 people. The prime minister on Saturday announced other restrictions, including limiting the size of gym classes, weddings and funerals.
“This strategy in New South Wales is to keep life as normal as possible, but also to make sure we maintain and even increase economic activity,” Berejiklian said.
The announcement came when the neighboring state of Victoria said it had detected 10 new cases of viruses acquired through local transmission, most related to an outbreak in the capital Melbourne. That city suffered one of those in the world last year tighter and longer closures, and had previously been the only place in Australia where he had been forced to wear masks.
Australia has managed to largely suppress community transmission through rigorous testing and contact tracking, and by imposing restrictions on international arrivals and isolating all travelers returning from trips abroad for 14 days to quarantine hotels.
Authorities believe the new outbreaks in Australia’s two most populous states are likely to be related, with the removal of many restrictions on the interstate border that allow people to travel more freely during the high summer holiday season. Detection of recent clusters has led some states to relocate hard borders, wreaking havoc on thousands of families traveling the interstate.
Berejiklian said on Friday that he did not consider Victoria’s decision to close the border with New South Wales to be “a good use of resources”. On Saturday, Victoria Health Minister Martin Foley responded by saying he did not “apologize” for the decision after transmission tests had shown his state’s outbreak had originated in Sydney.
The New South Wales branch of the Australian Medical Association welcomed the decision to make masks mandatory in Sydney, after Victoria’s decision to implement the measure statewide Thursday.
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“This is a crucial decision, especially because more and more people will return to work after the holidays and trains and buses are becoming more and more crowded,” he said in a statement.
Other changes to the rules announced on Saturday included that the southern areas of the northern beaches be considered part of Greater Sydney, allowing restrictions in these suburbs to be reduced. For the rest of this region, home stay orders will remain in effect until January 9, with no visitors allowed and non-essential businesses remaining closed.
Despite recent restrictions in Sydney, Berejiklian said he remains committed to allowing a cricket match to be held from January 7 at the Sydney Cricket Ground, between Australia and India. The game will have a multitude of Until 24,000 people a day for up to five days.
“This is an example where the New South Wales government’s strategy is to keep jobs, maintain the morale and well-being of the community, while making sure we are safe from Covid,” he said.
(Updates with new details from the eighth paragraph.)