‘Concerning’ pocket of COVID cases in Sydney that can’t be traced

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has revealed one area of Sydney is causing her extreme concern, as cases of COVID-19 are diagnosed every day that cannot be traced.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has revealed there is still a pocket of Sydney where cases of coronavirus are diagnosed every day with no known source.

Chains of transmission are believed to be spreading through south west and western Sydney, which have not yet been linked to any known source.

Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, where the Premier announced seven new cases of COVID, she revealed there have been one or two cases every day with no known source, all from the same pocket of Sydney.

Noting there had been 16 cases in the past few weeks that still had no known source, Ms Berejiklian said there was concern about community transmission “which is particularly active in southwestern and western Sydney”.

“(The 16 cases) are part of the same strain but they don‘t have a confirmed source as to where the virus was acquired,” she said.

“For that reason we are really encouraging people in southwest and western Sydney to come forward and get tested.”

Of Wednesday’s new cases, diagnosed up to 8pm on Tuesday night, two were from hotel quarantine and five had been locally acquired.

NSW chief health officer Kerry Chant said one was a close contact of a previously reported case with no known source. The source of the second, from southwest Sydney, is under investigation, while the third is a household contact of an existing case. The fourth is a case from western Sydney with no known source, and the fifth is a contact of that case.

7 new cases of #COVID19 were diagnosed in the 24 hours to 8pm last night, bringing the total number of cases in NSW to 3,777.

Of the 7 new cases reported:
•2 are returned travellers in hotel quarantine – one from overseas and one from Victoria
•5 are locally acquired pic.twitter.com/aosmP9t0B5

— NSW Health (@NSWHealth) August 19, 2020

On Tuesday, it was revealed a security guard working in hotel quarantine at the Marriott Hotel in Circular Quay had contracted the virus from two women who had returned from the US and were staying in a hotel room on the same floor the guard was working on.

The Premier said it was “a miracle” this kind of transmission had not occurred earlier and stressed the guard had done nothing wrong in how they acted once becoming infectious.

“The key message here is, no matter what job you have, as soon as you feel any symptom, you should go home and isolate for 14 days, and that is what this guard did for 14 days … there’s no indication he ever did the wrong thing.”

The guard worked shifts at Sydney Markets in Flemington and Parramatta Local Court after becoming infected, prompting some to call for those working in quarantine environments to cease taking shifts anywhere else

Ms Berejiklian said there was no merit to the idea, claiming that logic would then forbid them from leaving their homes for any other reason.

The investigation into the guard’s infection is focused on points of overlap with two women who returned from overseas and were staying in the same hotel room at the Marriott.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said there was no suggestion a security guard who contracted the virus while working at the Marriott Hotel ‘did the wrong thing’. Picture: Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images

Dr Chant said the pair were moved out of the hotel and taken to hospital on August 5.

“The two scenarios we are investigating is points of overlap with those two people, or whether there could be a third case, an intermediate case, whether the contact could have been with someone else and that person has followed on,” she said.

“We have reviewed CCTV footage at the times of overlap, and there’s no clear answer as to how transmission occurred.”

Testing is available for everyone who worked at the Marriott from July 31 to August 4 at the Maritime Museum.

Dr Chant said health authorities were taking a “wide-ranging view” of how the virus may have spread, but said the diagnosis paled in comparison to the concerning levels of transmission in western and southwestern Sydney.

“I am equally as concerned, if not more concerned, about transmission in southwestern or western Sydney, where we continue to have one or two cases pop up every day where we don‘t have a source.,” she said.

There have been 3777 COVID cases in NSW since the beginning of the pandemic. There are eight patients in ICU, five of whom are ventilated.