Lismore, along with all of regional and metropolitan NSW will remain in lockdown until August 28.

The extension of the statewide lockdown was announced in the NSW Premier’s press conference this morning.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian said extending the lockdown of regional and rural Australia was a “precautionary response”.

She said the crisis committee extended the lockdown to be in line with the greater Sydney lockdown based on Covid case numbers - and “to get down to zero cases in the regions”.

Yesterday, 681 new cases of Covid 19 were reported in NSW.

She said the new cases, not just in Sydney, but in Dubbo, Bathurst and Mudgee – as well as in the Southern region of Goulbourn and Northern region of South Kempsey - meant “we need to continue to be worried about the regions”.

“The detections of Covid virus fragments in Yamba sewage and other regional areas has given us a level of concern,” she said.

“We want people to stay at home and stop the spread, so we are keeping the regions in lockdown.”

She reiterated that people should get tested and isolate if they exhibit any symptoms of Covid.

NSW Queensland border

When questioned about the difficulties that Northern Rivers border communities had in crossing from Tweed Heads over into Queensland, a NSW Police spokesperson said moving the border

line to any other location would just be shifting the problem – and it was not a solution.

“The police commissioner is working with our Queensland counterparts to work with critical supply chains on the border,” he said.

“We won’t move the border because it will have unintended consequences for the broader Northern Rivers area.”

He also announced that a permit system for those living in the Greater Sydney region kicks in on Saturday.

“If you go to the regions to inspect a home, that will be permitted,” he said

“All essential workers leaving the Greater Sydney will need to have a permit and will need to have Covid test for previous seven days.

He also said the areas of Shellharbour and the Central Coast will be treated as regional NSW, not Greater Sydney.

Vaccinations

The Premier and NSW Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant encouraged people to get vaccinated as soon as they can, in order to reach the target of 80% of the population being vaccinated

“In NSW, we already have had 5.5 million jabs,” the Premier said. “When get to six million, people will have the opportunity to have greater freedoms.

“These are challenging times, but we can see the light at the tunnel – once we get high vaccination rates, life will look much rosier.

“Now more than ever we need to reach out to one another.

“We need to lift our spirits and focus on accessing supports and services and look after each other.”

Opening up again

“When we do open up again, Delta will start creeping in. We can’t pretend there will be no cases of Delta. We will have to live it.”

Dr Chant said there had been 120,000 Covid tests done in NSW.

Of the active Covid cases in NSW, 471 were in hospital and 82 cases in ICU were not vaccinated. One person died yesterday who had one dose of the vaccine already.