In this morning’s NSW press conference, Minister for Health Brad Hazzard slammed individuals who pull ‘pranks’ when signing into venues, putting their names down as cartoon characters. Obviously, this makes contact tracing incredibly difficult to do, and we’ve got no time for such nonsense.
Thankfully, it was announced by Gladys Berejiklian today that there were only 15 new cases in NSW, all linked to the Avalon cluster. This new data is the result of over 38,000 new tests over the weekend, as the NSW gov looks to prevent any further spread of infection.
Brad Hazzard, on the other hand, used his time to stress the importance of signing your real name into venues and using QR codes to help make contact tracing easier. Apparently, there have been quite a few Donald Ducks roaming around Sydney, so I’m sorry for anyone who ran into my ex.
“Now, what we are finding is that some of the visitors to various venues still think that it is funny to be caught putting in there that you’re Donald Duck or Mickey Mouse or a false phone number,” Hazzard said.
“That must stop. This is a worldwide COVID pandemic. And thinking it’s smart to call yourself Donald Duck or Mickey Mouse is about as stupid as it gets.
“So that must cease. Secondly, businesses who do have QR codes and are using [anything] other than the Service New South Wales providers really need to equip themselves now with the knowledge of who they call in the event that they get a call from Health.”
According to Berejklian, the results in the last 24 hours cannot predict any sort of trend so far. Despite numbers halving overnight, the state gov will be waiting on Wednesday morning to make a final call on where NSW is going from here.
So far, masks will not be enforced but thoroughly recommended.
“I’m extremely pleased we’ve had a record number of tests. To have more than 38,000 people come forward in a 24-hour period gives us enormous confidence that the number of cases that have been identified is a realistic position given the number of people who have come forward to get tested,” Berejiklian said.
“We want to make sure that we keep people healthy. We also want to make sure that we reduce that social isolation and don’t allow people to have adverse mental health consequences because of what Christmas or New Year’s might look like for them.”
Stay safe and stay inside folks, we can only tackle this if we work together.
