As it happened: NSW records 78 new local COVID-19 cases; Victoria lockdown extension confirmed; SA to begin week-long lockdown

Good evening and thank you for reading our live coverage of the day’s events. If you’re just joining us now, there’s been some late-breaking news affecting regional NSW. Here’s everything you need to know:

• People who live in the Orange City Council, Blayney Shire Council and Cabonne Shire Council areas in the central west region of NSW will go into a seven-day lockdown from midnight tonight, after a person from the COVID-19 hotspot of south-west Sydney visited the area while infectious with the virus. Masks must also be worn indoors, other than in the home, and in outdoor settings where it is not possible to socially distance.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian on Tuesday.Credit: Janie Barrett

• NSW recorded 78 new local COVID-19 cases, 27 of which were in the community for their whole infectious period. Premier Gladys Berejiklian says the lockdown in Greater Sydney, now in the fourth of at least five weeks, “is making a difference” and “that 78 number would have been much, much higher had people not been doing the right thing”. She is hoping to see the benefit of difficult decisions, including a halt on all construction work, in the coming days.
• Victoria’s five-day lockdown, which was initially set to end tonight at 11.59pm, will be extended until next Tuesday. In a swipe at his NSW counterpart, Premier Daniel Andrews said Victoria needed more time to get on top of the current cluster of 85 cases but was “avoiding a NSW-style” lengthy lockdown “where you just lose control of cases”. The state recorded 13 new cases of COVID-19 in the community (four of which we knew about four yesterday). Mr Andrews said nine of those 13 cases were in isolation for all of their infectious period, which was “very, very promising” and “we want to see more of that”.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews on Tuesday.Credit: Eddie Jim

• Victoria has tightened the rules for people travelling into the state from COVID-19 hotspots dubbed red zones (ie Greater Sydney). From 11.59pm on Tuesday night, and for the next two weeks, the only people eligible to receive a permit who are travelling from a red zone are authorised workers and people who will need to apply for a compassionate exemption. This means Victorian residents in Sydney are shut out unless they fall into one of those categories. South Australia will become a red zone for Victorians from 11.59pm on Wednesday.
• South Australia entered a seven-day lockdown at 6pm after recording two new cases of the highly-transmissible Delta strain of COVID-19 overnight. There are now five cases associated with the cluster.
• Tasmania responded to South Australia’s lockdown by shutting its borders from 4pm to all but essential travellers (who must quarantine for 14 days). NSW and Victoria are already shut out.
• Queensland has recorded one new locally-acquired case of COVID: a woman vaccinated with both doses of the Pfizer vaccine. The woman travelled from Melbourne on July 13 to Maroochydore on the Sunshine Coast, with her infectious period stretching back to July 15. She also travelled to Cairns and Mareeba in North Queensland.

Victorians will be able to apply for Commonwealth COVID-19 disaster payments from this Friday.

People affected by the latest extended lockdown will be able to claim $600 a week if they have lost 20 or more hours of week.

They will be able to claim $375 a week if they have lost between eight and 20 hours of work, or the same amount if they’ve lost a full day of work.

Federal Minister for Emergency Management and National Recovery and Resilience Bridget McKenzie said the easiest way for Victorians to access the payments was through myGov.

“The payment is now recurring and automatically paid for any future weeks of a lockdown,” she said in a statement.

New Zealand has suspended its travel bubble with a third Australian jurisdiction, South Australia, as the state enters a seven-day lockdown.

The suspension will run for at least the length of the lockdown.

New Zealand Minister for COVID-19 Response Chris Hipkins, pictured with New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.Credit: Getty Images

New Zealand’s authorities have already paused the travel bubble with Victoria and NSW. Victoria’s suspension was extended on Monday for at least another two days.

The country’s COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said the decision to suspend the travel bubble with South Australia was based on public health advice from New Zealand officials.

“We acknowledge this will be disruptive for travellers and organisations,” he said.

“However, given the current uncertainty and our consistently cautious approach to prevent COVID-19 from entering the New Zealand community, we are confident this is the right approach.

“New Zealanders currently in Australia are being urged to return home as soon as possible.”

Despite the suspension, the New Zealand government’s website says people who are currently in South Australia but ordinarily live in the country “will be able to travel starting with the next available flight, and are encouraged to do so”.

New Zealand residents will have to take a COVID test and return a negative result within 72 hours of flying.

Four new tier-1 exposure sites were added to Victoria’s official list on Tuesday evening, including an Aldi supermarket in Beaconsfield, a petrol station in Berwick and a car rental outlet in Dandenong.

A speech pathology clinic in Berwick was also added as a tier-1 site. Anyone who attended these tier-1 venues at the specified times needs to get tested and quarantine for 14 days regardless of the result.

The dates of exposure for BR International Logistics in Derrimut have also been updated, with the freight services company’s office being added as a tier-1 location for a week.

The case attended the venue every day over the past seven days to Monday and anyone who visited the office at any time over that period needs to get tested and isolate for 14 days.

Six tier-2 exposure sites were also added on Wednesday night - a Cremorne cafe called Sloane Ranger, across two dates and times last week and pop-up shop Status Quo PopUp in Burnley Street Richmond across four dates and times last week. Anyone who attended tier-2 venues during the specified timeframes needs to get tested for COVID-19 and isolate until they receive a negative result.

Sloane Ranger is near several other COVID exposure sites, including the restaurant Ms Frankie, where most of Tuesday’s new cases are linked to. A further three staff members, two patrons and two household primary contacts had tested positive for the virus.

There are now more than 350 COVID exposure sites in Victoria. These are the latest, added tonight:

Richmond

Status Quo PopUp

172 Burnley Street

14/07/2021 8:00am - 3:00pm

Tier 2

Richmond

Status Quo PopUp

172 Burnley Street

15/07/2021 8:00am - 3:00pm

Tier2

Richmond

Status Quo PopUp

172 Burnley Street

16/07/2021 8:00am - 3:00pm

Tier 2

Richmond

Status Quo PopUp

172 Burnley Street

17/07/2021 8:00am - 3:00pm

Tier 2

Cremorne
Sloane Ranger
13 Cremorne Street
Cremorne VIC 3121
14/07/2021 8.25am - 9.10am
Tier 2

Cremorne
Sloane Ranger
13 Cremorne Street
Cremorne VIC 3121
15/07/2021 8.25am - 9.05am
Tier 2

Beaconsfield
Aldi Beaconsfield
53 Old Princes Highway
Beaconsfield VIC 3807
17/07/2021 1.30pm - 3pm
Tier 1

Berwick
Shell Coles Express Berwick
4-28 High Street
Berwick VIC 3806
18/07/2021 10.30am - 10.55am
Tier 1

Berwick
Confidence Speech Pathology Services
2/6 Skyline Way
Berwick VIC 3806
18/07/2021 8.50am - 10.30am
Tier 1

Dandenong
Budget Car & Truck Rental Dandenong
2 Lonsdale Street
Dandenong VIC 3175
18/07/2021 2pm - 2.35pm
Tier 1

Derrimut
BR International Logistics
1/169 Australis Drive
Derrimut VIC 3026
13/07/2021 - 19/07/21 12:00am - 11:59pm
Tier 1

Victoria’s Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton has declared South Australia a “red zone” from 11.59pm on Wednesday.

That means all people in South Australia, including Victorian residents, are barred from entering Victoria from midnight tomorrow unless they have an exemption. South Australia has gone into a seven-day lockdown.

Residents can’t travel back on red zone permits under new rules announced on Tuesday. They dictate the only residents who can return from red zones are authorised workers and those who get approval for a compassionate exemption.

The ban on red zone permits will be in place for at least two weeks.

Professor Sutton has also declared South Australia an “orange zone” retrospectively from 11.59pm on Monday, July 12. That means anyone who is currently in Victoria but has visited South Australia since then has to get tested for COVID-19 and isolate until they return a negative result.

A second COVID-19 outbreak inside the Olympic village in as many days has forced Tokyo 2020 organisers to defend the protections they have in place to stop the spread of the virus through the Games precinct.

An unidentified athlete staying in one of the high-rise towers which, at the peak of the games, will house 6700 people, is the latest COVID-19 case. The infection followed two South African footballers earlier this week. The total number of cases connected to the Games both inside and outside the village had risen to 71 as of Tuesday afternoon, a day before competition officially begins with the softball in Fukushima.

Poland’s team wait for medical tests related to COVID-19 on their arrival for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. Credit: AP

Tokyo 2020 spokesman Masa Takaya insisted despite the cases, there had been “no significant bumps” in the road towards’s Friday’s opening ceremony.

“The IOC and Tokyo 2020 are absolutely clear that the Olympic village is a safe place to stay,” he told reporters.

“We cannot say there will be no positive cases within the Olympic community given the situation that we have a massive number of people engaged within this project. But there are no significant bumps, in terms of the positivity rate, compared to the same number found in any other place.”

IOC president Thomas Bach has claimed there is “zero” risk of athletes infecting other residents or Japanese working in the village.

Read the full story here.

Here’s some more details from NSW Health about the seven-day lockdown that will come into effect in three local government areas in the state’s central west from midnight tonight.

The lockdown will affect Orange, Blayney and Cabonne Shire Council, and residents there must stay at home unless they have an essential reason to leave.

The reasons are:

• Shopping for food or other essential goods and services
• Medical care or compassionate needs (people can leave home to have a COVID-19 vaccination unless they’ve been identified as a close contact)
• Exercising outdoors in maximum groups of two, unless people are members of the same household
• Work or tertiary education where people cannot work or study from home
• Schools will remain open, under Level 3 restrictions. All staff and students are still expected to be at school
• To attend a wedding or a funeral - but only during the grace period, which ends at 12:01am on Friday, July 23. After this date, funerals will be limited to 10 people

NSW Health initially said people could leave home for education if they couldn’t study from home, but later specified that applies to tertiary education only, and schools remain open.

The stay-at-home orders will also apply to people who have been to Orange, Blayney and Cabonne Shire Council on or after Saturday, July 17.

People in the LGAs have to wear masks indoors outside their homes, and in outdoor settings where they cannot socially distance from others.

NSW Health said authorities would continue to monitor the COVID situation closely and provide updated information and advice.

“We understand this is a difficult time for the community and appreciate their ongoing patience,” it said in a statement.

“It is vital people continue to come forward for testing to help us find any COVID-19 cases in the community.”

Good evening and thank you for reading our live coverage of the day’s events. If you’re just joining us now, there’s been some late-breaking news affecting regional NSW. Here’s everything you need to know:

• People who live in the Orange City Council, Blayney Shire Council and Cabonne Shire Council areas in the central west region of NSW will go into a seven-day lockdown from midnight tonight, after a person from the COVID-19 hotspot of south-west Sydney visited the area while infectious with the virus. Masks must also be worn indoors, other than in the home, and in outdoor settings where it is not possible to socially distance.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian on Tuesday.Credit: Janie Barrett

• NSW recorded 78 new local COVID-19 cases, 27 of which were in the community for their whole infectious period. Premier Gladys Berejiklian says the lockdown in Greater Sydney, now in the fourth of at least five weeks, “is making a difference” and “that 78 number would have been much, much higher had people not been doing the right thing”. She is hoping to see the benefit of difficult decisions, including a halt on all construction work, in the coming days.
• Victoria’s five-day lockdown, which was initially set to end tonight at 11.59pm, will be extended until next Tuesday. In a swipe at his NSW counterpart, Premier Daniel Andrews said Victoria needed more time to get on top of the current cluster of 85 cases but was “avoiding a NSW-style” lengthy lockdown “where you just lose control of cases”. The state recorded 13 new cases of COVID-19 in the community (four of which we knew about four yesterday). Mr Andrews said nine of those 13 cases were in isolation for all of their infectious period, which was “very, very promising” and “we want to see more of that”.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews on Tuesday.Credit: Eddie Jim

• Victoria has tightened the rules for people travelling into the state from COVID-19 hotspots dubbed red zones (ie Greater Sydney). From 11.59pm on Tuesday night, and for the next two weeks, the only people eligible to receive a permit who are travelling from a red zone are authorised workers and people who will need to apply for a compassionate exemption. This means Victorian residents in Sydney are shut out unless they fall into one of those categories. South Australia will become a red zone for Victorians from 11.59pm on Wednesday.
• South Australia entered a seven-day lockdown at 6pm after recording two new cases of the highly-transmissible Delta strain of COVID-19 overnight. There are now five cases associated with the cluster.
• Tasmania responded to South Australia’s lockdown by shutting its borders from 4pm to all but essential travellers (who must quarantine for 14 days). NSW and Victoria are already shut out.
• Queensland has recorded one new locally-acquired case of COVID: a woman vaccinated with both doses of the Pfizer vaccine. The woman travelled from Melbourne on July 13 to Maroochydore on the Sunshine Coast, with her infectious period stretching back to July 15. She also travelled to Cairns and Mareeba in North Queensland.

On Tuesday night the Gippsland Primary Health Network confirmed a positive COVID-19 case in the Wellington Shire, which covers towns including Sale, Yarram and Maffra.

In a statement on social media it said the Wellington Respiratory Clinic would increase capacity but there were no exposure sites associated with the positive case because the person was in quarantine while infectious.

Other testing sites will also be set up in Sale and Yarram on Wednesday.

Three weeks after it outlined its much-publicised road map for living with COVID-19, Singapore is returning to a partial lockdown for a month.

The south-east Asian city state is recording the highest incidence of new cases of the virus in 11 months with growing clusters around nightlife venues and a major fishing port causing alarm.

With 163 new infections recorded on Monday, the country is reverting to the tight restrictions it had in place during May and June, shutting down dining in restaurants, closing indoor venues such as gyms and limiting gatherings to two people.

The development is a setback to Singapore’s ambition to start dealing with COVID-19 as it would influenza and treating it as an endemic and manageable disease rather than a pandemic.

However, those plans are tied to vaccination and while it has the highest inoculation levels in the region, with 46 per cent of the population of 5.5 million fully vaccinated and 73 per cent having received one shot, the rate is not yet high enough for Singapore to confidently take the next step.

The latest wave of the virus here sprung from several so-called KTV bars, which are publicly called karaoke outlets but at which sexual services are known to be offered by foreign hostesses.

As we reported earlier today, two more crew members of the BBC California, currently docked at Fremantle, tested positive for COVID-19 on Tuesday.

Ten out of 14 seafarers from the ship, which came to Australia via COVID-19 Delta variant-stricken Indonesia, have now returned positive tests for the virus while the remaining four have completed serology testing showing they have yet to catch COVID-19.

“Our number one priority is don’t have COVID come from that ship to shore,” Mr McGowan said.

Mr McGowan said one option was to take the four healthy crew members off the ship and put them into hotel quarantine.

The Premier said the state was in conversations with the federal government on how best to manage ship arrivals after several vessels arrived in WA in the past month carrying positive cases.

About 25 stevedores are also being contacted by health authorities after a cargo ship, the Mattina, which was in WA from July 10 to 12 reported nine positive cases of COVID-19 in New Zealand overnight.

Mr McGowan said the WA Chief Health Officer considered any COVID-19 threat from the Mattina to WA to be low risk as it is believed all appropriate disease control protocols were being followed during its time in port.

WA Health is now monitoring 17 active COVID-19 cases; 10 on the BBC California, six in hotel quarantine, and one person in a stable condition in a Perth hospital who had been on board the MV Emerald Indah which had stopped by Geraldton.