Covid NSW: Daily cases surge beyond 100
The number of daily Covid-19 cases in NSW has surged above 100 again, with the state recording its biggest increase for four days.
Premier Gladys Berejiklian confirmed a further 110 locally acquired cases on Wednesday, damaging hopes Sydney's lockdown is having its desired effect after cases fell for three consecutive days to Tuesday.
An alarming 43 people were in the community for the entirety of their infectious period, while a further 17 were partly in the community while infectious.
Those figures combined is more than double the 29 cases fully or party infectious in the community announced the previous day.
The exposure of 13 further cases is under further investigation.
"The simple message is this is really serious," Ms Berejiklian told reporters.
"Please know how extra careful everybody needs to be because the last thing anybody wants is unknowingly taking the virus home and giving it to your loved ones."
She reiterated the number of cases fully in the community while infectious needs to be as close to zero as possible to end the lockdown.
The number of overall cases is a sharp increase from the 78 announced on Tuesday – a day which saw the virus spread into regional NSW, prompting the town of Orange to enter a snap lockdown.
Ms Berejiklian said a strong testing number of more than 83,000 – a daily record – in the previous 24 hours meant it was inevitable daily cases were going to be higher.
She said workplaces were proving to be the most common place of transmission and defended her decision to shut down the construction industry.
The premier tightened restrictions on Saturday and was confident that move will begin to have an effect on daily cases in the coming days.
"We need to wait until at least the weekend and early next week to see the impact of those harsher restrictions," she said.
"The alternative of not taking action when we did would have seen today's numbers double, triple, four times what it is."
More than half of new Covid cases unlinked
NSW Health's Dr Jeremy McAnulty said it was alarming a rise in unlinked cases was occurring.
"There is concern that there are unlinked cases which mean that because it is so transmissible, people are not aware of who they have been in contact with," he said.
"So it is a reflection of how infectious this virus is and why we need to take these precautions."
Fifty-six cases of Wednesday's total are unlinked however Dr McAnulty said that would go down as tracing continued throughout the day.
Dr McAnulty said the virus was now spreading from the southwestern suburbs to Western Sydney with Merrylands, Guildford, Belrose, Toongabbie, Seven Hills, Mount Druitt, Rooty Hill and Lakemba now on high alert.
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