Bunnings, Chemist Warehouse on alert as exposure list expands
As Sydney's five million residents anxiously await a decision on whether the city's two-week lockdown will end come Friday, contact tracers continue to add to a mounting list of Covid-19 exposure sites.
On Monday night NSW Health identified three venues of concern, including a Marrickville restaurant with exposure stretched across six days.
Anyone who visited the Little Hong Kong restaurant in Marrickville Metro Shopping Centre between 9am and 2pm on all days between June 26 and July 1 must immediately get tested and isolate for 14 days, regardless of the result.
Frango Charcoal chicken in Edmondson Park is also on the list, with anyone who visited on Friday between 9am and 3pm facing the same instruction.
As is anyone who visited Bridge of Belfield Pharmacy in Belfied on June 28 for 20 minutes from 8.20am.
There are three new casual contact sites listed – Chemist Warehouse in Hurstville, Hurricane's Grill in Bondi Beach and Bunnings in Kingsgrove.
There are now more than 450 exposure locations and transport routes listed on the NSW Health website.
NSW's lockdown at 'critical point'
Sydneysiders have been warned they are at a critical point of lockdown, with Premier Gladys Berejiklian pleading with residents to do the right thing and not to derail the city's reopening.
Daily cases rose to 35 on Monday – the joint highest since the latest outbreak began on June 16 and just a day after infections in the community appeared to be falling. Eleven of the cases were partially or entirely in the community while infectious.
Ms Berejiklian was furious over a party at Waterloo's Meriton Suites over the weekend where three cases emerged.
Health Minister Brad Hazzard added: "What is the thinking of some of these people?"
Lockdown decision nearing
NSW Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Grant would not comment on the likelihood of extending the 14-day lockdown beyond its July 9 deadline until she had "looked at all the data".
"Every day brings a new set of data and a new set of challenges and what we think in the morning can change in the afternoon," Dr Chant said.
She said there had been a record number of tests (58,373) for a Sunday but asked the public not to get "fatigued" with testing.
Premier Gladys Berejiklian said this second week of lockdown was "critical" for getting on top of the outbreak, which has reached 312 people since emerging in Bondi in mid-June.
"The lockdown certainly has been effective in not doubling and tripling the figures that we were worried about," Ms Berejiklian told reporters.
The premier said health authorities are still collating data on the current lockdown and would soon be ready to advise the government on the way forward.
With AAP
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