Sydney isolated from rest of Australia as COVID outbreak grows

Sydney was isolated from the rest of Australia on Sunday after all of the country’s states and territories imposed travel restrictions on its residents as a coronavirus cluster in the city grew to around 70.

The Australian Capital Territory (ACT) sent a stern ‘do not come to us’ message to Sydney, the country’s most populous city of more than five million people, warning its residents they would be quarantined for 14 days if they arrived..

“If you are not an ACT resident and have been in greater Sydney…our message is simple: do not travel to the ACT,” the ACT health department said.

The states of Victoria and Queensland, and the Northern Territory, banned people arriving from Sydney as of Monday.

Queensland police will reintroduce road checkpoints at the New South Wales (NSW) state border to help enforce the new declaration of greater Sydney as a COVID-19 hotspot.

South Australia state imposed a 14-day quarantine for Sydney arrivals on Sunday and banned travellers from affected suburbs. The island state of Tasmania took similar steps on Saturday. Western Australia state imposed a hard border closure.

Travellers from elsewhere in NSW, where Sydney is the state capital, will require documents showing they are not coming from the affected Sydney suburbs if they wish to cross state borders.

About a quarter of a million people in Sydney’s northern beach suburbs where the outbreak has occurred have been put into a strict lockdown until Christmas Eve.

“If we can lockdown here and get rid of it, fantastic and everyone else can be free,” Rachel Buxcon, a retired northern beaches resident said. “But if it extends, then we’re all in it together.”