Chant: Lockdown 'critical' in achieving no community transmission

New South Wales Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant says the two-week lockdown is "critical" to achieve no community transmission of the Delta variant as the state battles to contain the COVID-19 outbreak.

Stay-at-home orders will be enforced on residents of Greater Sydney, the Blue Mountains, the Central Coast and Wollongong areas after 29 new cases were recorded on Friday.

Although testing numbers have been high, Dr Chant said stricter restrictions were needed in order to uncover “chains of transmission.

“We need these measures in place to allow us to bring this outbreak under control,” she said.

“The contact tracing and testing numbers, despite them being quite high the testing numbers and the contact tracers getting in contact with people rapidly, what we're seeing is by the time we've got there, and uncovered the chains of transmission, we have a number of people infectious in the community.

“Given we are aiming to get to no community transmission and as we roll out the vaccine, it is important that we get to that as quickly as possible.

“The restrictions need to be applied absolutely and it's critical that we all comply with them if we are going to achieve that no community transmission and the duration of the lockdown remains at that 14 days.”