Fifty days into the ongoing Delta outbreak in Greater Sydney, the NSW crisis cabinet has announced a series of additional lockdown measures to ensure greater compliance with stay-at-home orders.
- Across Greater Sydney, people will now only be permitted to travel a maximum of 5km from their home (you can calculate your 5km bubble here).
- “Outdoor recreation” is now formally defined as being either exercise or supervising children or pets. Outside of this, people may only leave their home for essential shopping, caregiving or singles bubbles, for work or study, or to be vaccinated.
- From Friday 20 August, people residing in Greater Sydney will need a permit to travel to regional NSW.
- People wishing to establish a singles bubble, who are based in one of Sydney's 12 hotspot LGAs, will now have to officially register the person they want to establish the bubble with via the Service NSW website.
- Travel to holiday homes or second homes outside of Greater Sydney will no longer be permitted unless it is necessary for "authorised workers".
To ensure these strict new measures are adhered to, the state police force has launched Operation Stay at Home, which will give officers new powers to reduce the level of rule-breaking. On-the-spot infringement notices will be raised from $1,000 to $5,000 for people found lying to contact tracers, lying on a permit, or being outside of the home without cause. On-the-spot fines of $3,000 can now be issued for people breaking the two-person limit on outdoor exercise or for anyone entering regional NSW without cause. Some 500 more Australian Defence Force personnel will be deployed to Greater Sydney to bolster the state’s police force and checkpoints will be established on major traffic routes out of the city to prevent people leaving the Greater Sydney region without a permit.
Premier Gladys Berejiklian said August 14 was the most concerning day of the crisis so far, with 466 cases of community transmission diagnosed in the 24-hour reporting period between August 12-13, and four deaths. At least 70 of those new cases were infectious in the community, and 345 have no known source of infection. Non-compliance with lockdown measures has been cited as the main driver of the NSW outbreak, with the Delta variant spreading to multiple regions around the state due to infected people travelling illegally. Berjiklian warned, "life in September and October will be really difficult", foreshadowing a potential fifth extension to the lockdown rules, which are currently set to expire on August 28.