More than 20 people are in intensive care in Sydney, with New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian extending lockdown by a fortnight after the state recorded 97 new locally acquired cases of Covid-19.
Photo: AFP
The Greater Sydney lockdown has been extended for at least two weeks.
The lockdown affecting Greater Sydney and its surrounds has been extended until 11:59pm (local time) on Friday, July 30.
Twenty-four of the new cases were out in the community while infectious.
Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the extension of the lockdown meant home learning would also continue for school students for another two weeks.
She warned people to prepare for the lockdown to be extended again.
"The current settings in terms of what people can't do won't change for at least two weeks," she said.
"Of course if health advice changes and we need to do anything further, we will."
Of today's 97 new cases, 70 of them were in Sydney's south west.
While most of the new infections were linked to known clusters, the source of 36 remained under investigation.
Social distancing restrictions in the local government area (LGA) of Fairfield were tightened yesterday.
Anyone who lives in that LGA and wants to leave it for essential work must get a Covid-19 test every three days, even if they have no symptoms.
"Unfortunately the main cases of community transmission are still direct family contacts or else work bases, and that's why we have to put in those measures yesterday to clamp down on those two areas which are providing unfortunately the greatest rates of transmission which we have to reduce," the Premier said.
Berejiklian thanked residents in the Fairfield LGA for heeding the calls to stay at home.
But she said the data from the Canterbury-Bankstown and Liverpool areas showed that people were still moving around too much.
NSW chief health officer Kerry Chant said there were currently 71 Covid-19 patients in hospital.
Twenty of them were in intensive care, four of whom were ventilated.
Of the 20 in ICU, one person is in their 20s, two are in their 30s, two in their 40s, five in their 50s, five in their 60s, three in their 70s and two in their 80s.
Meanwhile, Victoria has recorded seven new local Covid-19 cases.
They are linked to removal company workers who travelled to the state from Sydney, and a family who recently returned from New South Wales.