Five deaths, 262 new local COVID-19 cases in NSW as Hunter, Upper Hunter to go into snap lockdown - Sydney Morning Herald

NSW has reported 262 new local cases on Thursday, the highest number of local cases ever recorded in the state in a 24-hour period.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian confirmed five people had died with COVID-19 overnight: three people in their 60s, one person in their 70s and one person in their 80s.

“Unfortunately four out of those five people were not vaccinated at all and one person had one dose of AstraZeneca,” she said.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian at Thursday’s COVID-19 briefing. Credit:James Brickwood

“No one who has died has had both doses of vaccine. I cannot stress enough how it’s so important for everybody of all ages to come forward and get the vaccine.”

The Premier announced a one-week lockdown for the Hunter and Upper Hunter region starting at 5pm on Thursday, in light of recently detected cases.

The lockdown will impact the local government areas of Newcastle, Lake Macquarie, Maitland, Port Stephens, Cessnock, Dungog, Singleton and Muswellbrook and involve the same restrictions in place in Greater Sydney.

Three schools across the Central Coast and Hunter regions have shut after five children tested positive to COVID-19.

While the Central Coast is included in Greater Sydney’s lockdown zone, Morisset and Maitland in the Hunter region, where two of the affected schools are located, will not be until this afternoon.

Hunter-New England Local Health District did not respond this morning to questions about whether the children were contacts of each other.

The Central Coast is included in Greater Sydney’s lockdown and students are learning from home unless they need to attend school for reasons such as being children of essential workers.

However, school had been operating as normal in Morisset and Maitland.

News of the cases led to long queues at Morisset testing clinic on Thursday morning.

NSW Health announced two new close contact venues in Sydney late on Wednesday night. Anyone who was at Polytrade Recycling Centre at Strathfield South last Monday from 5.30am to 2.20pm or Tuesday from 8.45am to 2.20pm or High Street Family Doctors at Penrith last Tuesday from 2pm to 3.10pm should immediately get tested and self-isolate for 14 days regardless of the result.

There were six new local cases reported in Victoria on Thursday.

Three of the new cases are under investigation, including a man who played a game of social football for a north-west Melbourne football club on the weekend and a woman in her 20s who is a teacher at Al-Taqwa College in Melbourne’s west.

Queensland recorded 16 new local cases on Thursday, all linked to the Brisbane west cluster which has largely spread among school students and communities. Four were in the community while infectious.

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Five deaths, 262 new local COVID-19 cases in NSW as Hunter, Upper Hunter to go into snap lockdown - Sydney Morning Herald
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