TUES COVID UPDATE – 199 NEW NSW CASES – 50 INFECTIOUS IN COMMUNITY – DON’T SHOP IN PENRITH LGA

Penrith is one of the local government areas mentioned this morning at the daily COVID media conference as an adjoining LGA which you should avoid.

Although not one of the 8 totally locked down LGAs, Penrith LGA has 40 cases of COVID and 19 of those cases have no known source – this is a large increase since the weekend when there were 29 known cases in Penrith LGA.

The Hawkesbury is still steady this morning at 6 known COVID cases with all sources known. In the last 24 hours there have been an additional 1381 COVID tests carried out in the Hawkesbury.

“It’s important we don’t have complacency, in particular with adjacent areas,” said Chief Medical Officer Kerry Chant this morning.

“The disease has the potential to creep,” she said. “You don’t go into those suburbs to shop. Go to a different shopping centre.”

Premier Gladys Berejiklian stressed we should all have as little human-to-human contact as possible.

And although 50 people were infectious in the community across NSW in the last 24-hours, the total comes to 129 if you factor in those not fully isolated or unknown throughout their infectious period.

It is unlikely the lockdown will be lifted at the end of August, the Premier suggested, unless we are at 70-80% vaccination rates or numbers infectious in the community have gone down to close to zero.

She said the challenge at the moment is we don’t know where we will be in a month’s time in terms of cases or number of jabs.

The focus is very much on getting vaccinated, with the Premier reporting there have been 3.9million jabs so far across NSW. She wants to get to 6m jabs by the end of August when this current lockdown finishes, but that would only be roughly half the NSW population. It would take 10m jabs to give 80% of the population coverage.

“Please know that, our complete motivation is to have our population as safe as possible,” said the Premier.

“I’m not willing to accept any unnecessary people dying, any unnecessary death.

“That is not our aim. Our aim is to keep people as safe as possible and living as freely as possible, especially given where vaccination rates are.

“Obviously, once vaccination rates hit 70% and 80%, that is a different proposition, but given where our vaccination rates are, our intent as a government is to keep our population, first and foremost, safe.

“That includes mental health as well as physical health and also as free as possible,” said the Premier.

In the last 24-hours there have been 104,536 COVID tests across NSW.

Here’s a list of Penrith LGA suburbs which should be avoided, says the Chief Medical Officer this morning:

Agnes Banks, Badgerys Creek, Berkshire Park, Caddens, Cambridge Gardens, Cambridge Park, Castlereagh, Claremont Meadows, Colyton, Cranebrook, Emu Heights, Emu Plains, Erskine Park, Glenmore Park, Jamisontown, Jordan Springs, Kemps Creek, Kingswood, Kingswood Park, Leonay, Llandilo, Londonderry, Luddenham, Mount Vernon, Mulgoa, North St Marys, Orchard Hills, Oxley Park, Penrith, Regentville, St Clair, St Marys, South Penrith, Thornton, Wallacia, Werrington, Werrington County, Werrington Downs.

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