Australia was so close to fully eliminating local transmission of COVID-19. As of Tuesday, we had only one locally acquired case nationally in New South Wales.
Then yesterday, New South Wales recorded its first locally-acquired cases of COVID-19 since 3 December.
Health authorities have commenced contract-tracing and genome sequencing after a man in his 70s and a woman in her 60s tested positive. They are close contacts of each other and failed to self-isolate while awaiting the results of COVID-19 tests. They visited a number of venues in Sydney’s Northern Beaches region while infections, prompting NSW Health to issue an alert for people who were at these venues at the same time.
A van driver who shuttles flight crews to and from Sydney Airport has also tested positive. And the cases are not believed to be linked.
To make matters worse, NSW Health this morning revealed that a further two positive cases have emerged, taking the total in this outbreak to five.
The fact that there seems to be no link between the shuttle driver and the other cases is a concern as it suggests there could be many more mystery cases in the community.
Let’s home NSW’s contact tracing gets on top of the outbreak ASAP.
All I want for Christmas is no lockdowns.
