Lisa Wilkinson admits Sydney has failed ‘test’ for lockdowns

Lisa Wilkinson has commended Dan Andrews’ decision to lock Victoria down immediately, learning from NSW’s mistakes.

Today marked the day that Victoria officially goes into a snap five day lockdown, following the Delta strain of Covid-19 finding its way into the state.

Premier Dan Andrews was quick to lock down the state after seeing NSW fail to do so fast enough.

In a press conference, Dan made a subtle dig to NSW, saying, “You only get one chance to go hard and go fast. If you wait, if you hesitate, if you doubt, you would be looking back wishing you had done more, earlier. I’m not prepared to avoid a five-day lockdown now to only find ourselves in a five-week or a five-month lockdown.”

Waleed pointed out the subtle dig Dan Andrews had at NSW. Picture: Channel 10

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“Well, I don’t know about you, Lisa, as a Sydneysider. I felt this was something quite pointed about the way that Daniel Andrews spoke about it,” said Waleed Aly to Lisa Wilkinson on The Project.

“’We’re not waiting, we know what happens when you wait.’ It sounds like he was talking about Sydney. There was constant references to Sydney. It’s like a head to head experiment,” he continued.

“We didn’t want to be the test case,” said Lisa. “But good on Daniel Andrews for recognising the mistakes that have been made here in New South Wales, and I mean, even today, even those cases being in the mid-60s, down from just over 100 two days ago, that’s a good sign, but the really worrying one continues to be the number of people who are still out there, infectious in the community. And that doesn’t seem to be shifting. And that’s what we’re all worried about.”

Lisa admits that NSW was a failed 'test' for locking down during the delta outbreak. Picture: Channel 10

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Mr Andrews made one thing clear in his speech today, that retail stores would not be open during the state’s snap lockdown. Something that NSW has been confused about since day one.

“Just for clarity, retail is shut,” he said, while detailing lockdown measures.

“It’s not open. There will be no browsing, it’s click and collect. That’s what it has to be. That’s what is safe. That’s what has worked before in Melbourne and it is what will work again.”

Daniel Andrews put Victoria into a 5 day snap lockdown. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Geraghty

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Victoria’s snap five-day lockdown will kick in from midnight after the state recorded more than a dozen new cases in 48 hours, all linked to NSW’s delta outbreak.

There are now 18 cases in Victoria with 75 exposure sites, 1500 primary close contacts and 5000 secondary close contacts.