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COVID UPDATE – FRI – “NATIONAL EMERGENCY” – 53 INFECTIOUS IN COMMUNITY – CALL FOR VACCINES IN NSW
At a Crisis Cabinet Meeting this morning at 8am, Chief Medical Officer Dr Kerry Chant told Ministers she now regards the NSW COVID situation as a National Emergency.
“Dr Chant and her team advised us that the situation as it exists in NSW is regarded as a national emergency,”said Premier Gladys Berejilkian at 11am this morning.
There are 136 new NSW cases up to 8pm last night, and 53 of those have been infectious in the community – so numbers are currently going up.
Hawkesbury numbers are still stable at 6 with the virus, and NSW Health know the source of each. Total Hawkesbury tests have gone up from 12,733 yesterday to 13,404 today.
But next door neighbour Blacktown local government area is going into enhanced lockdown – no workers from there, aside from essential workers, will be able to leave the local community.
“The local government areas of both Cumberland and Blacktown local government areas, will also be subject to workers are not being allowed to leave those communities unless the health and emergency workers were on the authorised list of workers,” said the Premier.
“There is no doubt that the numbers are not going in the direction we were hoping they would at this stage,” she said.
“It is fairly apparent that we will not be close to zero next Friday,” she added, which is when the lockdown would potentially have ended.
“From today we are calling on the Federal government to refocus our national vaccination strategy. If we want to contain this virus we need to have a discussion about refocussing the vaccination strategy,” she said, adding the state needed more doses of the Pfizer vaccine.
Dr Chant said she wants to see extra Pfizer doses for the state now.
“I want to see them today,” she said.
“My sense of urgency is absolute urgency so I think we need to be seeing vaccines in arms on Saturday, Sunday, Monday.”
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