Coronavirus NSW: A third of Sydney cases outside northern beaches

NSW Health data shows that nearly a third of the state’s 139 cases detected between December 16 and December 28 are from Sydney suburbs outside the northern beaches. SEE COVID CASES BY SUBURB.

NSW Health data shows that nearly a third of the state’s 139 cases detected between December 16 and December 28 are from Sydney suburbs outside the northern beaches local government area.

The new data reveals that 46 of the 142 cases reported since the start of the Avalon cluster reside in suburbs outside the northern beaches.

Eight positive cases linked to the Avalon cluster reside in the suburbs of the Woollahra local government area, followed closely by five in Blacktown and four in North Sydney.

Several cases were also detected in Canterbury-Bankstown, the Central Coast, Hornsby, Inner West, Ku-ring-gai, Liverpool, Sydney and Sutherland, as well as Waverley, Lane Cove, Ryde, Parramatta and Hunters Hill.

A third of positive COVID cases reside in suburbs outside the northern beaches.

All but one of the 142 cases are linked to the Avalon cluster – either because the infected person visited the northern beaches or caught the disease from a contact.

The spread has been ­accompanied by a drastic drop in testing over the Christmas to New Year period with Dr Kerry Chant saying swabs needed to double if there was to be confidence new cases were being detected quickly.

NSW Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant has raised concern about the risk of the virus spreading as cases are detected outside of the northern beaches. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gaye Gerard

An inner west resident, a Wollongong resident and another person who had recently visited northern Sydney made up three of the six new virus cases announced yesterday.

The other three cases were in isolation linked to the Avalon cluster, with two residing in the northern beaches and one from the Central Coast.

Areas of the eastern suburbs, including Bondi and Edgecliff and the CBD have also been linked to cases.

Dr Chant said the risk of virus spread out of the northern beaches were increasing.

“The risks in Greater Sydney and greater NSW are ­almost as high as the southern bit of the northern beaches. (Greater Sydney is) not quite there yet, but obviously that is something for us to consider. I am asking everybody across the state to be on high alert,” she said.

“You might think you are in a remote part of NSW … but you may have been with someone who has been to ­another part of the state where they could have ­acquired the virus.”

People line up around Wollongong Hospital for COVID-19 testing today. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Simon Bullard.

A long line of cars wait to get tested at the Inner West Council Works Depot. Picture: Adam Yip

Testing numbers peaked on Christmas Eve, with almost 70,000 people getting swabbed in the 24 hours to 8pm. Just 16,329 people were tested on Monday and 15,364 on Sunday, which Dr Chant said was too low.

“Many weeks ago I would have been happy with more than 16,000 tests in a 24-hour period. But for me now, I would love to see those numbers pushed up, well over 20,000 to 30,000,” she said.

“Those incredibly high testing levels before the Christmas period gave us a confidence that we were diagnosing cases rapidly and allowed us to better understand the scope of the outbreak.”

Premier Gladys Berejiklian said Sydney residents must be on high alert until the tracing teams discover what areas the new COVID cases visited.

“Now we have cases outside the northern beaches, that is always a cause for concern. Until those links are established, all of us in Greater Sydney must be on high alert,” Ms Berejiklian said.

Australian National University infectious diseases professor Peter Collignon said it was a race against time to ­detect infected people.

“The more we find now the better if we really want to nail this,” he said. “We need people tested who have any respiratory symptoms until we have no cases. If we catch the disease early, it‘s less likely it will spread to more people.”