Victoria to ask for military help on border with NSW amid growing concern over Sydney’s northern beaches COVID-19 cluster

The Sydney to Hobart Yacht race was cancelled on Saturday night for the first time in 76 years because of Tasmania’s quarantine restrictions on Sydney travellers, while Western Australia shut its border to people from NSW.

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More than 90,000 people from NSW have been issued permits to cross the border into Victoria and more than 300 residents of the Northern Beaches “red zone” have already arrived since the outbreak took hold on December 11.

The NSW government has not instituted hard lockdowns or mandatory mask wearing at airports, a decision a leading epidemiologist said was “bordering on negligence”.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian instead ordered people in the affected area to remain home except for reasons including work, exercise or shopping. She stopped short of introducing new rules for the rest of Sydney, instead asking residents to voluntarily cancel their plans and stay home.

“If you are planning a night out tonight, we ask you to consider changing those plans,” she said.

Health Minister Martin Foley said the Sydney outbreak was a rising concern and government sources who spoke to The Age on the condition of anonymity said they believed the Sydney rules did not go far enough.

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“We remain extremely concerned about the outbreak in NSW and the likelihood that it has seeded beyond the northern beaches,” Mr Foley said. “Victorian health officials have met [Saturday] evening to discuss a number of options to protect Victoria’s hard-earned gains – those discussions will continue into the evening and announcements will be made in the morning.”

The meeting between Victorian government and health officials on Saturday night was to discuss hard border closures, mandatory COVID-19 testing and declaring all of Sydney a “red zone”, meaning all arrivals would have to quarantine.

Mr Foley urged Victorians not to travel to Sydney, or risk getting marooned. “I know it’s not the message we want to be hearing at this time of year, but please reconsider your plans,” he said.

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Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton on Saturday night announced the health department was extending the “orange zone” to include the NSW Central Coast region.

“Any people … entering Victoria in coming days, or who have already entered … and who have visited this region must now get tested and isolate immediately until they receive a negative result,” he said.

Burnet Institute epidemiologist Mike Toole said NSW was putting the entire nation at risk by not mandating masks and placing too much faith in its heralded contact tracing system.

“I have been saying the same mantra over the years: go hard and go fast. And this is not hard or fast,” he said.

Professor Toole said he was shocked to see TV images of people at Sydney Airport not socially distancing in check-in queues and not wearing masks, saying the NSW government’s decision not to mandate them at airports was “bordering on negligence”.

“It was just shocking to anyone from Melbourne,” he said.

Adrian Esterman, an epidemiologist at the University of South Australia, said the NSW government was being selfish by not introducing stricter measures, describing those introduced to date as “wishy-washy”.

He advised Victoria to close its borders to NSW, as he warned that the chances of the outbreak leaking into Greater Sydney in the coming days was “fairly high”.

Professor Esterman said while NSW had proven it was able to control outbreaks before, the cluster had not previously been this big.

“With borders closed, they can do their own thing. They can have clusters every week and they can suppress them,” he said.

“But now that borders are open, they’re now risking places like Victoria, which went through months of hell to get down to zero cases, which isn’t fair.”

However Professor Jodie McVernon, the director of epidemiology at Melbourne’s Doherty Institute, believes the measures introduced in NSW to date are adequate.

NSW reported 23 new cases yesterday, a number Ms Berejiklian said was likely to rise.

Six people have been sent to Victorian hotel quarantine from the northern beaches, including two unaccompanied minors who arrived at Melbourne Airport yesterday morning.