All residents of Australia’s largest city will be required on Monday to wear masks for shopping, public transport, cinemas and casinos and places of worship.
Photographer: David Gray / AFP / Getty Images
Photographer: David Gray / AFP / Getty Images
Clothing in Sydney will become mandatory in most indoor public places as Australian health authorities struggle to obtain new groups of viruses that have disrupted the peak of the nation’s summer holiday season.
All residents of Australia’s largest city will be required to wear masks when shopping, public transport, cinemas and casinos and places of worship, Gladys Berejiklian told reporters in New South Wales on Saturday. People who break the rule, which will also apply in Wollongong, Central Coast and the Blue Mountains, will receive a $ 200 ($ 154) fine, she said.
New South Wales has added seven new locally sourced cases in the last 24 hours, increasing the size of a cluster originally limited to Sydney’s Northern Beaches region, which has spread to other parts of the city and now infected more than 150 people. The prime minister announced other restrictions on Saturday, including limiting the size of gym classes, weddings and funerals.
“This strategy in New South Wales is to keep life as normal as possible, but also to make sure that we maintain and even increase economic activity,” Berejiklian said.
The announcement came as neighboring state Victoria said it had detected 10 new cases of the virus transmitted by local transmission, most of them linked to an outbreak in the capital Melbourne. That city endured one of the worlds last year the strictest and longest blockages and had previously been the only place in Australia where wearing a mask was mandatory.
Australia has succeeded in largely suppressing community transmission through rigorous testing and tracking of contacts and the imposition of restrictions on international arrivals and the isolation of all travelers returning from trips abroad for 14 days in quarantine hotels.
Authorities believe the new outbreaks in Australia’s two most populous states are likely to be linked, by removing many restrictions on interstate borders that allow people to travel more freely during the peak summer holiday season. The detection of the latest clusters has led some states to relocate hard borders, wreaking havoc on thousands of families who have traveled between states for holidays.
Berejiklian said on Friday that he did not consider Victoria’s decision to close the border with New South Wales as “a good use of resources”. On Saturday, Victorian Health Minister Martin Foley responded by saying he did not “apologize” for the decision, after transmission tests showed that his state’s outbreak originated in Sydney.
The New South Wales branch of the Australian Medical Association welcomed the decision to make mandatory masks in Sydney, after that Victoria’s decision to implement the measure Thursday across the state.
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“This is a crucial decision – especially as more people return to work after the holidays, and trains and buses become increasingly crowded,” a statement said.
Other changes to the rules announced on Saturday included that areas south of the northern beaches be viewed as part of Greater Sydney, allowing for easing of restrictions in those suburbs. In the rest of that region, home residence orders will remain in force until January 9, with no visitors allowed and non-essential businesses remaining closed.
Despite the latest restrictions imposed on Sydney, Berejiklian said she remains committed to allowing a cricket match to take place from January 7 at the Sydney Cricket Ground, between Australia and India. The game will have a lot of up to 24,000 people a day for five days.
“This is an example where the government strategy in New South Wales is to keep jobs, to maintain the morale and well-being of the community, while ensuring that we are confident in Covid,” she said.
(Updates with new details from paragraph 8.)