Northern beaches to lock down until Wednesday with 13 new cases

That means only leaving your home if it is for essential purposes such as for work, for
compassionate grounds, for exercise or to go shopping.

The Premier has also asked the rest of Sydney to avoid unnecessary activity, and flagged the possibility of further restrictions being put in place tomorrow for the greater Sydney area.

NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant said the “vast majority” of cases in the northern beaches COVID-19 outbreak are linked to two venues: the Avalon RSL and bowling club.

She said there were only three cases so far not linked to those two venues.

Ms Berejiklian said there were people from outside the northern beaches who attended both venues on the Sunday, “so we’re making sure we have considered that there hasn’t been any spread of the disease in greater Sydney”.

‘Moving feast’

The Anytime Fitness gym in Avalon is emerging as another potential key venue after an infectious person attended the gym five times over the past fortnight.

“I think it is really important that people understand that this is a moving feast and we need to reassess continually,” Dr Chant said.

“I thank the people that we are ringing, giving us the time of going through methodically your records and weaving us that detailed information, and thanks to the businesses who have put the safety of their customers as a high priority and have those digital records that can provide rapidly to our contact tracing team.”

Got a plan for today? ‘Cancel it’

NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard has issued stern advice to residents of the northern beaches as the area prepares to go into lockdown at 5pm today – cancel your plans. Now.

“The lawyers are working with us now to put in place the orders for 5pm, but as a local, I send this message very clearly to all locals … you should actually be not going anywhere in any substantial groups today, right from now,” he said.

“If you have got lunches with a lot of friends today, cancel it. If you are going out big functions this afternoon, cancel it. If you are going to a gym, hopefully the gyms have closed, they will be closed by 5pm but I would not be going to a gym.

“We have obligation as northern beaches residents to get rid of this virus as quickly as possible and make sure it doesn’t get out beyond the northern beaches.”

Ms Berejiklian said the good news is that the virus outbreak “seems contained” within the Avalon cluster at this stage and urged residents living outside the northern beaches to stay away.

“It is important to people on the northern beaches not to move around with each other, and certainly we don’t want people going into the northern beaches unless you absolutely have to,” she said. “It is not a good place to be at this time.”

Investigations ongoing

Preliminary genome sequencing confirmed the virus strain was imported from the US. Virus samples from the Avalon cluster came close to matching a virus sample in a woman who flew into Sydney on December 1 from the US and was in hotel quarantine.

But health authorities still don’t know how the virus was introduced to the northern beaches and all avenues of investigations are ongoing.

The cluster has left the Sydney to Hobart yacht race on a knife’s edge. Organisers will decide on Saturday morning whether the iconic event will be called off for the first time in its 75-year history due to the outbreak.

Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania have all banned travellers from Sydney’s northern beaches.

The Victorian government are awaiting the latest COVID-19 case numbers from NSW to determine whether they will enforce a total border closure between the states.

Victorian authorities have strongly discouraged travel between Victoria and Sydney until the new year and declared the northern beaches area a “red zone”.

Visitors from the northern beaches who arrive in Victoria from Saturday will be forced into a 14-day, $3000 hotel quarantine stay.

The announcement has shattered thousands of Christmas travel plans, and comes as Victoria marks almost 50 days without a local coronavirus case.

Victorian health authorities are contacting all airline passengers from NSW who arrived in Victoria form December 11, and any who had travelled from the northern beaches and other exposed NSW areas are required to get tested and self quarantine for 14 days from the date they were last in these “red zones”.