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SYDNEY: Christmas travel plans for thousands of Australians were thrown into chaos on Friday (December 18) as states and territories imposed border restrictions after 28 cases of COVID-19 were detected in Sydney, with fears of infections spread throughout the city.
About a quarter of a million people on Sydney’s North Beaches, where the cases have been found, have been told to stay home and wear masks if they are elsewhere.
Restaurants in the area, expecting a lucrative Christmas trade, reported hundreds of cancellations, dampening prospects for an economic recovery from earlier virus waves.
“Everyone in the greater Sydney area should be on high alert,” New South Wales (NSW) State Premier Gladys Berejiklian said at a press conference on Friday announcing 10 new cases.
READ: Australia’s New South Wales state says work from home is over, but employees still avoid the office
New South Wales health authorities issued an “urgent call” to all residents of the state to monitor for COVID-19 symptoms, saying that confirmed cases from Sydney’s North Beaches had visited various locations around Sydney, the most populous city in Australia.
Authorities have designated two clubs on Avalon Beach as the original transmission sites, but they are still trying to hunt down patient zero, and have issued more than 30 potential secondary transmission sites, as far away as Bondi and Cronulla beaches in the east and south of the country. city.
Genome sequencing points to the latest strain of the virus being of American origin, NSW Health said. A traveler arrived in Australia with similar stress on December 1, but has not been confirmed to be patient zero.
“My anxiety is that we have not found the direct transmission route and we cannot be sure that we have blocked the transmission line,” said Kerry Chant, NSW’s director of health.
Hospitals in affected suburbs and emerging test sites have been flooded with many people waiting hours to get tested.
The main public facilities in the northern beach area, such as swimming pools and playgrounds, have been closed, and the entry of visitors to the facilities for the care of the elderly has been prohibited.
READ: Australia rushes to trace COVID-19 source after small group found in Sydney
All the beaches along the 29 km stretch of coastline have been closed until Monday.
Local media reported that shoppers emptied the shelves of a supermarket on the northern beaches on Friday, in a replay of frenzied scenes earlier in the year when the coronavirus first hit Australia.
CHRISTMAS TRAVEL CHAOS
Many people flocked to Sydney airport on Friday to try to leave the state for fear of severe border closures. Some travelers leaving New South Wales were placed in immediate hotel quarantine for 14 days when they landed in another state.
The state of Queensland and the Northern Territory required that people who have been to the northern beaches be quarantined for 14 days. The state of Western Australia imposed this on anyone from New South Wales.
Australia’s second most populous state said that people from New South Wales will now require a permit to enter Victoria.
As of this week, Australia had gone more than two weeks without local transmission, allowing most states and territories to remove almost all barriers to social distancing.
READ: Australia reports first local COVID-19 case in 2 weeks after airport worker tested positive
Such was the optimism that Australia projected on Thursday that its economy will recover from its first recession in three decades faster than anticipated, after containing the spread of COVID-19.
Australia’s hopes for a rampant economic recovery, led by domestic tour operators such as Virgin Australia and Qantas Airways, now seem unlikely.
“We have dealt with this before, we will deal with it again, it is important that people remain calm on these issues,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison said. “There is no magic formula that will make the pandemic just go away.”
Australia has reported just over 28,000 coronavirus cases and 908 deaths since the pandemic began and estimates that the majority of active cases in the country are returned by foreign travelers in hotel quarantine.
NSW said on Friday it had fined 13 crew members on a LATAM Chile flight to Sydney US $ 1,000 each for allegedly not following orders and isolating themselves.
As a result of the violation, the state will now require international flight crews to conduct a mandatory quarantine at a handful of government-designated hotels.
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