What would spark new lockdown in NSW as Covid-19 cases surge
The NSW Premier has revealed what key metric the health team is keeping an eye on to decide whether restrictions will be tightened.
The NSW Premier has revealed what metric the health team is keeping an eye on to determine whether Covid restrictions will be reintroduced in the state.
NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet has said “ICU presentations are the key metric”.
“We want to make sure that our health system has the capacity as we move through this next challenge of the pandemic,” he said on Sunday.
And the Premier did not rule out making the call to tighten restrictions.
“When we believe there’s evidence in front of us we need to potentially tighten restrictions we will,” he said.
“And it’s almost certainly as we move through, as we see overseas, as they head into the winter months, certain challenges will come our way,” he said.
“There will be curve balls, certain things we don’t expect. There’s almost certainly to be other variants that may come our way.”
NSW Health deputy secretary Susan Pearce said while ICU admissions remain stable, the team was “keeping a very close eye”.
“The trend remains that the majority of people who end up in ICU are not vaccinated. Or may have only had one dose,” she said.
“That evidence is not just here in NSW, but in other parts of the country, so it’s a really clear level of evidence about the effectiveness of the vaccines.”
NSW recorded 2566 Covid cases in the 24 hours to 8pm on Saturday. There are 227 in hospital and 28 in ICU. The state recorded no deaths.
The state has reached 94.9 per cent of residents over 16 years of age being first dose vaccinated.
Mr Perrottet admitted they did not expect to get to a level of close to 95 per cent when they started the vaccination campaign.
“The efforts that people have made have ensured we can open up as safely as possible, we have always sought to strike that balance. And ultimately I think NSW is in a very strong place,” he said.
The key message from the Premier was for NSW residents to go and get their booster vaccine five months after their second dose.
Previous promises
Back in October, then-premier Gladys Berejiklian assured NSW residents that once vaccination targets were met, statewide lockdowns would be a thing of the past.
“If there are high rates of disease in a particular locality or a sudden surge or an outbreak, the Doherty report says we have to restrict movements in the communities,” Ms Berejiklian told reporters at the time, unveiling NSW’s since-revised road map back to normal life.
“It doesn’t mean you can’t still go and do things you want do but your mobility will be restricted within a particular distance and that could happen at any stage.”
Ms Berejiklian added that NSW Health had the power to, at “any time”, restrict the movement of a fully vaccinated person or provide advice to prevent an influx of cases in any town, suburb or local government area where there might be a “concentration of disease” or “an outbreak that wasn’t anticipated”.
She also plainly stated that once the state completely opened up, there would be a “surge” in cases. Fast forward three months, and her prediction was right.
Driven by a new, more transmissible strain and an almost total return to normal, case numbers in NSW have grown from the low hundreds to more than 1000 in the space of a week.
The state saw a huge jump in local coronavirus cases on Thursday — reporting 1742 new infections in the 24 hours to 8pm on Wednesday. Of those, 122 cases have been identified as being infected with the Omicron variant.
The bulk of Thursday’s cases (633) are in the Hunter New England local health district, where authorities are currently dealing with multiple outbreaks at pubs and clubs in Newcastle, which experts warn could become one of the “highest-transmission events” in the world.
With Christmas a little over a week away and end-of-year festivities in full swing, officials are now considering how to bring the situation back under control – which could involve again imposing public health orders on certain LGAs.
Speaking to Sunrise on Thursday morning, Minister for Jobs, Investment and Tourism, Stuart Ayres, said the government wouldn’t shy away from introducing localised lockdowns if deemed necessary.
“[We] will keep the option open. As we reopen the economy, if we believe it is the right thing to do, that is an option on the table,” he told the program.
“This is why we are asking people to do the right thing, be cautious, get your booster shot, that is the most important thing you can do.”
Mr Ayres said the more people that get their booster shots, the less likely new restrictions would be needed.
He also hinted that unvaccinated people — who were granted the same freedoms as fully vaccinated NSW residents under Wednesday’s easing of restrictions — could be placed back under tough measures if there was a rise in people presenting to hospital with the virus who haven’t received their Covid shot.
“The Premier made it very clear that if we see unvaccinated people making their way into hospital because they don’t have that level of protection, the government will take action to protect people and our health system,” Mr Ayres said.
NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet has long insisted that the focus should be on hospitalisation rates and not case numbers, arguing that NSW needs to learn to live alongside the virus.
But with predictions the state could reach 25,000 cases a day by January, Australian Medical Association (AMA) president Omar Khorshid told the ABC that a majority-vaccinated population won’t be enough to keep strain off the hospital system.
“Even if Covid cases are now much more mild, whether it be Delta or Omicron … if you’ve got tens of thousands of people contracting the disease then you’re still going to have significant numbers of people ending up in hospital … ending up in ICU,” Dr Khorshid said.
“We just don’t know how fast [Omicron] will spread and how many people will get sick.”
With the rising number of superspreader events linked to clubs, Health Minister Brad Hazzard on Wednesday urged people against attending these types of venues in the lead up to Christmas Day.
“You don’t need right now to be jam-packed in an environment with no windows and nothing happening except music thumping. Maybe it’s not a good time [for that] if you want to have a Christmas Day,” Mr Hazzard told reporters.
“My strong suggestion would be to take a little bit of time out an enjoy Christmas with less people and preferably outside, but certainly with windows open. Just be cautious.”
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