Five million Sydney residents will spend at least one more week in lockdown than initially planned, amid the community spread of the COVID-19 Delta variant.
The lockdown is now planned to end at midnight July 16.
In the 24 hours to 8pm on Tuesday, New South Wales recorded 27 new cases. NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said she was concerned that only 13 of those cases were in isolation for the entirety of their infectious period, while seven were in isolation for parts of their infectious period. Seven were in the community while infectious.
There have been 357 locally acquired cases reported since 16 June 2021, when the first case of the Bondi cluster was reported. Of these, 25 cases are not linked to a known case or cluster.
Here's what else we learnt from Gladys Berejiklian's press conference.
Will Sydney schools be open next week?
No.
Schools in Greater Sydney will not resume face-to-face learning next week and will instead move to online learning.
Ms Berejiklian said this is "not because schools aren't a safe place," but instead because they need to reduce mobility in the population.
"We need to stop literally hundreds of thousands of adults moving around and interacting with each other inadvertently as they drop kids off and pick kids up at those usual times," the Premier explained. "Our main concern is too many people being mobile at the same time and having those interactions."
Schools in regional NSW will resume face-to-face learning from next week.
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