'Incredibly pleased': NSW reaches significant coronavirus milestone
NSW has reached a significant coronavirus milestone after recording no locally acquired cases on Tuesday.
The state recorded two cases overall, both overseas cases in hotel quarantine.
“I’m incredibly pleased to see where we’re at... we’re in a very good place,” Premier Gladys Berejkilian told reporters.
It is the first time since July 3 that there has been no locally acquired cases during a 24-hour period.
The last time that was achieved was before the Crossroads Hotel cluster took hold, sparking months of low levels of community transmission in and around Sydney after a truck driver had brought the virus into the state from Victoria.
Before Tuesday, NSW had recorded one locally acquired case for four consecutive days.
However the total of two cases came from just 7,616 tests – the lowest number of tests since June 14, according to the ABC.
NSW Health and Ms Berejiklian are appealing to the community to come forward for testing right away if you have a runny nose or scratchy throat, cough, fever or other symptoms that could be COVID-19.
“If people don’t come forward and get tested, we can’t keep the pandemic at bay,” NSW Health said in a statement.
While optimism is growing NSW could be on the verge of eradicating the virus, Ms Berejiklian warned there will be future outbreaks and pointed to the recurrence of the virus in New Zealand after over 100 days without local COVID cases.
South Australia and Queensland ease border restrictions
On Tuesday, South Australia said it would lift its COVID-19 border restrictions with NSW from midnight on Wednesday, meaning NSW residents will no longer be required to isolate for 14 days.
Ms Berejiklian said it was a welcome move, saying that those communities had unnecessarily been doing it tough as a result of the previous restrictions.
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