COVID-19 transmission Warnings directed at ethnic minorities

NSW Health officials are now pre-emptively targeting Sydney’s ethnic communities in a bid to prevent COVID-19 outbreaks.

NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard. Picture: AAP

NSW Health officials are now pre-emptively targeting Sydney’s ethnic communities in a bid to prevent COVID-19 complacency, as concerns increase about a second wave of infections occurring in Victoria and the potential for one to flare up among NSW multicultural groups.

Meetings will be held with community leaders, and social media campaigns will warn of the potential for the virus to spread, even though infection rates seem low.

“The challenge for Victoria and indeed the NSW government has been how to best reach out with critical messages about the danger of this virus spreading in their communities,” NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard told The Australian.

“I have tasked NSW Health with coming up with short and sharp messages to multicultural communities, specifically those who are likely to have family and friends in Melbourne. Those messages are ­focused on the dangers of travelling to the hotspots and ­potential transmission or seeding of the virus back here in NSW.”

Mr Hazzard declined to name which multicultural communities would be targeted, but said engagements would occur between health officials and local governments in the western and southwestern ­suburbs of Sydney, both of which are home to numerous ethnic populations.

Part of the outreach would be done via consultation with community leaders, he said, and also through grassroots agencies. The messages being broadcast would emphasise the need for minimal contact between residents in NSW and those living in the coronavirus hotspots south of the border.

The Victorian government has identified the local government regions of Hume, Casey, Brimbank, Moreland, Cardinia and Darebin as hotspots for the virus.

Mr Hazzard said he was working closely with Victorian Health Minister Jenny Mikakos to help ­insulate NSW against Victoria’s ­burgeoning number of COVID-19 infections that appear to be rising through community transmission.

In NSW, the number of daily infections has increased over the past week, but almost entirely among travellers returning from overseas who remain under mandatory two-week quarantine in Sydney hotels to eliminate risk of transmission.

Since late March, about 3163 symptomatic travellers have been tested in hotels, with 104 found to have been positive. Ten new cases were identified in the 24 hours to 8pm on Wednesday from a total of 13,278 tests carried out in the state.

NSW Health said more than 750,000 COVID-19 tests had been conducted around the state since the start of the pandemic.

Mr Hazzard said public health officials attached to contact-tracing teams would be among the assistance provided to Victoria in the ­immediate short term. He described these contact-tracing teams as being “critical in breaking the chain of transmission”.

“NSW has offered up whatever assistance we can give, and we would expect if things went pear-shaped we would get the same back from Victoria,” he said, adding that, for the time being, it would be better if everyone in NSW “stayed away from Melbourne”.

Ms Mikakos said information about COVID-19 had been translated into 55 languages, but those in Melbourne’s hotspots may not be engaging with traditional media.

Victoria’s Chief Health Officer, Brett Sutton, said engaging with linguistically diverse communities was far from easy.