As it happened: NSW records 35 new cases, eight in Queensland and none in Victoria

Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt has warned airlines against taking advantage of Australians overseas seeking to come home on commercial flights.

National cabinet this week decided to reduce the cap on commercial arrivals by half, exacerbating the difficulty 34,000 stranded Australians already face in returning home.

Availability of commercial flights to Australia is very low and prices are unaffordable for many.

“There will be a decrease in the commercial arrivals but an increase in what are called the facilitated arrivals to Howard Springs in the Northern Territory,” he said.

“We know that some of those flights have in fact been under-subscribed in recent weeks so there is that capacity to bring additional Australians home via Howard Springs.”

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is working through the priority locations for repatriation flights to be facilitated.

Mr Hunt said the Delta strain of the virus was especially virulent so precautions had to be taken at the border.

He noted some calls for the border to be entirely closed and all flights stopped, which the government was not prepared to do.

Asked about commercial airlines increasing prices in response to the demand for flights to Australia and the restrictions on capacity, Mr Hunt warned against gouging.

“I hope there is nobody who seeks a commercial advantage from difficult circumstances and that’s a strong, clear message,” he said.

For the second day in a row, NSW has recorded its highest number of local COVID-19 cases over the past year, as government and health authorities express optimism that Sydney’s lockdown may still be lifted at the end of Friday, July 9.

NSW recorded 35 locally acquired cases of COVID-19 in the 24 hours to 8pm on Friday. There were 56,331 tests processed in the reporting period.

Twenty-nine of the new infections were linked to previously confirmed cases and six remain under investigation.

“We have seen those testing numbers stay at very high levels consistently during the lockdown,” Premier Gladys Berejiklian said, noting the “green shoots” of what the lockdown was meant to achieve had begun to emerge but it was too early to say when her government and its health experts would be able to make the call on whether the lockdown is extended beyond Friday.

Nine of the new cases were in the community during their entire infectious period, a decline from 12 in the previous 24 hours.

Read the full story here.

Hi all,

David Estcourt here closing our national blog for this Saturday. Recapping the top stories:

• Victoria’s move out of its remaining COVID restrictions will be partially linked to how the outbreak is managed in NSW, COVID-19 response commander Jeroen Weimar says.
• For the second day in a row, NSW has recorded its highest number of local COVID-19 cases over the past year, as government and health authorities express optimism that Sydney’s lockdown may still be lifted at the end of Friday, 9 July.
• Queensland has avoided any further extension to the snap lockdown of parts of the state, despite a handful of new cases on Saturday, with contact tracers urgently working to find the final links that will tie all the cases together.
• Epidemiologists have disputed Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s claim that coronavirus will be able to be treated “like the flu” when Australia reaches a high vaccination rate, saying contact tracing and widespread mask wearing may be needed for years to avoid excess deaths.
• The financial burden from Perth’s latest lockdown will stretch into the weekend for wineries, restaurants, pubs and bars and will have implications for hospitality businesses across Western Australia as the state enters two weeks of school holidays.
• Australia’s pathway out of the pandemic relies heavily on the Pfizer vaccine, but the majority of the nation’s 40 million doses are at least three months away.
• And over in London, the Australian government has told the UN high commissioner that blocking an Australian man’s wish to return home to support his mother during her cancer treatment did not cause him “irreparable harm”.

In case you missed it, our data team traced the spread of the Sydney outbreak:

The blog will be back tomorrow. Take care.

Sydneysiders have spent their Saturday enjoying exercise in the winter sun, as COVID lockdown enters week two. Photographers from the Sydney Morning Herald put together a snapshot of life across the city.

Readers can view the full gallery here.

Queensland health authorities have updated their list of exposure sites to almost 180, after new local cases of COVID-19 were reported and a snap lockdown, which has since been lifted, was extended for Brisbane and Moreton Bay.

Anyone who visited any of the close or casual contact sites now extending to additional Brisbane Airport locations and stores across the Westfield North Lakes Shopping Centre and the suburbs of Carina, Carindale and Tingalpa is urged to quarantine at home and get tested as soon as possible.

Five new community cases were reported on Saturday ahead of the remaining lockdown being lifted at 6pm, with contact tracers becoming confident they were getting ahead of the latest infections.

Eleven south-east Queensland local government areas, along with Townsville city and Palm and Magnetic islands, were ordered into a three-day lockdown until 6pm on Friday in response. That lockdown was lifted for all but Brisbane and Moreton Bay council regions, where it was extended for 24 hours.