Victorians driving back from New South Wales are urged to have enough fuel, water and food for a lengthy wait at the border crossing before the state shuts them out at midnight.
A Navy-inspired restaurant has been revealed as a so-called missing link between the Croydon and Wollongong coronavirus clusters.
NSW Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant said none of the three new cases were linked to the Avalon cluster on Sydney s Northern Beaches.
The Swallowed Anchor.(Google Maps)
Instead, Dr Chant said investigations found a case from the Croydon cluster and a case from the Wollongong cluster both visited the Swallowed Anchor restaurant in Wollongong on the 19 December. There may have been a transmission event at that venue, she said. This was before either the case from Croydon cluster or the case from Wollongong had their infection, and what we re looking at is whether they were both infected at that time and date, so this is a triangulation piece.
Health detectives search for Avalon links to western Sydney mystery cases
Normal text size
Advertisement
Virus detectives are searching for the source of a concerning COVID-19 cluster in Sydney’s west as northern beaches residents wait to hear what relief from restrictions Premier Gladys Berejiklian will grant them on Saturday.
Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant said the results of genomic sequencing for three new western Sydney cases expected on Sunday will reveal whether they are linked to the Avalon cluster.
Gladys Berejiklian will likely announce a relaxation of some northern beaches restrictions on Saturday.
Credit:Sam Mooy
“At this point the western Sydney cases are not linked [to the Avalon cluster]. We’ll be interested whether that sequence matches the Avalon cluster,” Dr Chant said, though there were other possibilities, such as the patient transport worker living in western Sydney who caught the virus from the overseas returned travellers he had shuttled.