More cases, more tests, more people in queues awaiting tests, more New Year's Eve rules and more COVID-19 hotspots added to the list in NSW.
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You get the feeling the edge of the wedge is not as thin as it once was in NSW. Then again, maybe the wedge is about as thick as the edges on the cricket bats that will be flailed about at the SCG next week. But more on that soon.
NSW recorded 18 local COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, including three announced yesterday. Of the 18, nine are linked to the Avalon cluster, six are from a new Croydon cluster and three remain under investigation.
Authorities have released an updated list of venues people with confirmed cases of COVID-19 visited and it ranges from a Santa Claus photo booth at a surburban Sydney shopping centre to a CBD bar, an outdoor cinema, churches in Wollongong, and shopping centres in to the south and north of Sydney.
Civic leaders south of Sydney are adamant about the need for essential travel only.
"That should have been one of the calls, that people limit their movements while this current outbreak is being managed," Wollongong Lord Mayor Gordon Bradbery said.
Just as concerning for one of his council peers was the large Greek population in her locality which may have visited the two Wollongong churches at the same time as one of the positive COVID cases.
"If there's someone who has tested positive in Wollongong there is every likelihood they could have been in Shellharbour or have family members in Shellharbour," Shellharbour Mayor Marianne Saliba said.
Limiting movement in a 20km stretch is one thing, quite another is the Third Test between Australia and India at the Sydney Cricket Ground starting next Thursday.
On the same day she reset some limits, Ms Berejiklian said a 50 per cent capacity at the SCG would be safer than people gathering at homes.
It's not a line Professor Raina MacIntyre, an epidemiologist with the University of NSW, endorses.
" ... it's right at that period when we would expect a surge of cases following New Year's Eve, which is very bad timing. I think it's just too much of a risk. I think they can still play the Test match. But I think the spectators should be watching it on television from home. The fact they're going ahead without a mask mandate in place is really risky."
The ABC's Dr Norman Swan is even more hardcore: lockdown Sydney for two weeks, mandate masks and have the Test but no spectators.
In the meantime a 41-year-old US Congressman-elect died from coronavirus complications in the US; Bangkok has shuttered a slew of entertainment venues after a virus surge; the first reported US case of the COVID-19 variant that's been seen in the UK has been discovered in Colorado; and millions more people in England are expected to be placed under tougher restrictions amid escalating case numbers.
Next up, folks: December 31, 2020.
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