Urgent new Covid alert for Fitness First, Bunnings and Uniqlo

The number of close contact exposure sites surged on Tuesday as health authorities frantically attempt to get to grips with the spread of the highly-infectious Delta Covid-19 variant in Sydney.

Late on Tuesday NSW Health added more than a dozen locations and transport routes to the ever-expanding list, meaning anyone who attended the sites at the specified time must isolate for 14 days and seek testing immediately.

Among the sites was Ashfield Bunnings where it appears a worker has tested positive, meaning the time of possible exposure stretches more than six hours on last Thursday.

Popular retailer Uniqlo is included, with its busy Pitt Street mall store an exposure site on June 21 for an hour from 10.15am.

Another Fitness First has been added, with the North Strathfield location identified for last Friday for two-and-a-half hours until 1.30pm.

A further 15 casual contact sites dotted around the city were added, including Woolworths, Coles and Officeworks stores.

The number of sites and transport routes has ballooned to well over 300 since the first community case was detected two weeks ago on June 16.

Earlier on Tuesday, Premier Gladys Berejiklian said she was concerned to see there was still a significant number of new cases that had still spent time in the community while infectious but hoped with the two-week lockdown such cases would be reduced.

Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant said a key indicator of success for the lockdown will be if all new cases were already in isolation.

Ms Berejiklian said cases could spike in the coming days despite two consecutive daily case totals below 20, and warned residents not to be lulled into a false sense of security.

NSW to 'live differently' for months

The premier said NSW residents will now have to "live differently" for months before returning to a Covid normal.

She hinted certain restrictions will have to stay, even after the current cluster is eradicated and Sydney ends its lockdown.

"When you know that you've got such a transmissible variant... you do need to look at what life looks like because what we want to do is prevent ever having to go into lockdown again," Ms Berejiklian said.

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She once again called on residents to come forward for the vaccine and said NSW must get 80 per cent of its adult population vaccinated before life can return to normal.

That equates to about 10 million doses completed, with the state only recently surpassing the 2 million mark.

The number of local cases since the outbreak began now stands at 149.

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