Berejiklian concedes lockdown ending this week is ‘highly unlikely’

Gladys Berejiklian has weighed in on when the NSW restrictions will end – and it’s not good news for those after a short, sharp lockdown.

Gladys Berejiklian has warned NSW’s Covid-19 lockdown is “highly unlikely” to end on Friday as the state plunged further into crisis.

NSW recorded another 77 cases on Sunday, including 33 who were in the community while infectious, and its first death from Covid-19 in months.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian was initially resistant to imposing a lockdown, but the state has entered its third week of harsh restrictions as it failed to bring the outbreak under control.

The extended lockdown was slated to expire on Friday night, but Ms Berejiklian poured cold water on the prospect of it ending on time.

“Everybody can tell it’s highly unlikely at this stage, given where the numbers are,” she said on Sunday.

“We’ve always been upfront about that. I’ve always said we need that exposure number in the community … to be as close to zero as possible, so we’re confident that we haven’t missed any chains of transmission.”

Ms Berejiklian conceded the numbers “aren’t going in the right direction” and was particularly concerned about the high number of positive cases who had been out in the community.

Gladys Berejiklian says lockdown is ‘highly unlikely’ to end on Friday as planned. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Bianca De Marchi

NSW Police issued 106 infringement notices in the past 24 hours, and Ms Berejiklian conceded authorities were “not confident” of a lockdown end date as people continued to flout stay-at-home orders.

“The quicker we continue to do the right thing, the quicker we can get out of this lockdown … That’s the strongest advice we have,” she said.

Sunday’s figure was NSW’s largest single-day case increase since mid-2020, and Ms Berejiklian warned “that trend will continue”.

“Given the number of people exposed in the community overnight, I’m anticipating the numbers in NSW will be greater than a hundred tomorrow,” she said.

“That’s what I’m anticipating. I’ll be shocked if it’s less than (that).”

“I fear that tomorrow and a few days afterwards will be worse, much worse than what we’ve seen today but what we need to be assured of is that the tide will turn once the impact of the changes we’ve made come to fruition.”

NSW chief health officer Kerry Chant said authorities could not afford to put out “spot fires” created by people interacting unnecessarily, and said the lockdown was designed to minimise mobility.

“You should have basically hardly been out of the house, hardly been in contact with anyone else, and therefore we (can) have confidence that the chain of transmission is really broken,” she said.