NSW health authorities are scrambling to find patrons connected with a restaurant outbreak as continuing coronavirus alerts go out for Western Sydney.
Key points:
- Authorities continue to alert about Jasmins Lebanese Restaurant and diners who attended on October 25
- Gladys Berekjiklian said the introduction of mandatory QR codes was “still on the table”
- An alert has also been issued for Bambino’s Kindergarten in Horningsea Park for October 29 and 30
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has criticised restaurants for not maintaining proper records and said she was “concerned” about compliance rates.
“We don’t have any room for complacency and as I foreshadowed last week, mandatory QR codes are still on the table for NSW, so I just want to make that very, very clear,” she said.
NSW Health said it was still attempting to find diners who visited the Jasmins Lebanese Restaurant in Liverpool on Sunday October 25, from 2:00pm to 3:30pm.
It said details of some people who were there “were not available”.
Without naming any venues, Ms Berejiklian said contract tracing for NSW Health at the moment was “very difficult” because “people in charge did not do the right thing”.
“It is never our intention to embarrass businesses,” she said.
“It is never our intent to put additional pressure on what is a difficult time, but we can’t compromise our public health safety — we can’t compromise how well we’re doing.”
Ms Berejiklian said she had sent Queensland Premier Annastasia Palaszczuk a congratulatory text message in the wake of her election win on Saturday night.
“I also highlighted that I was keen to speak to her on the border issue and I hope she takes up that opportunity,” Ms Berejiklian said.
When asked if the Queensland Premier had replied, Ms Berejiklian said: “Not yet.”
She accused the Queensland Government of “creating chaos” by opening to regional NSW but not Sydney.
Ms Berejiklian said she was hopeful the Victorian border could be reopened soon.
“I [want] to give the signal to the people on New South Wales that we’re talking weeks, not months, in terms of when the Victorian border may come down,”
“That again is based on health advice. I think it’s important to allow people to plan ahead.”
Western Sydney warnings
In the latest update, NSW recorded one new case of locally-transmitted COVID-19, breaking Australia’s milestone yesterday of zero infections outside of hotel quarantine.
The case was already announced yesterday but as it was confirmed outside the official reporting period to 8:00pm the previous night, has been included in today’s statistics.
The case is a child who visited the Flip Out trampoline park in Prestons in south-west Sydney and follows another child who visited the venue who has since tested positive.
The children visited the centre on October 25.
The cases are linked to the Hoxton Park cluster, which has now reached six infections.
The new case reported today also attended Bambino’s Kindergarten in Horningsea Park on October 29 and 30.
Anyone who attended at the same time must get tested and isolate for 14 days, regardless of the result.
There were another six cases in the latest report among overseas travellers in hotel quarantine.
There were 7,431 tests conducted in the last period compared with 14,571 in the previous 24 hours.
NSW Health said lower numbers were generally expected over weekends but urged people, even with the mildest of symptoms, to get tested.
It said this advice “particularly applies” to several suburbs across south-west Sydney, inlcuding West Hoxton, Hoxton Park, Carnes Hill, Edmondson Park, Denham Court, Prestons, Busby and Miller.
NSW Health also said COVID-19 fragments had been found in sewage at a Liverpool treatment plant which could “represent unrecognised cases”.
It repeated calls for people from the area to come forward for testing.
