The public have been barred from viewing the iconic New Year’s Eve fireworks from the harbour foreshore in Sydney due to the growing Covid-19 cluster in Australia’s biggest city.
On Tuesday, Sydney recorded three new locally acquired coronavirus cases, which increased the cluster in the city’s Northern Beaches region to 129, reports Xinhua news agency.
A shortened seven-minute firework display was planned to go ahead for the New Year eve.
However, members of the public were told that they would not be able to enter designated zones around the city centre and harbour’s edge unless granted an exemption by the government.
Venues within the zone will be able to hold planned functions, however a limit on attendance numbers was tightened to one person per four square metres.
“My strong message to everyone in Greater Sydney this year is to watch the fireworks on TV,” New South Wales (NSW) Premier Gladys Berejiklian said on Tuesday.
A special vantage point set aside for frontline health and emergency workers was also cancelled.
Despite recording only single figure daily increases in case numbers for the past week, the Northern Beaches region of Sydney remained in lockdown.
Residents were barred from leaving but they would be allowed to hold small gatherings of people from the same area on the New Year eve and the following day.
“This hasn’t been an easy Christmas period, but our contact tracers have been able to get on top of this outbreak and the number of new cases remains low,” NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard said.
Outside of the lockdown area, residents were allowed a maximum of 10 visitors to their homes.
However, they were warned that with cases detected at several venues across the city the risk to Greater Sydney was increasingly severe.
The state of NSW currently accounts for 4,881 coronavirus cases and 54 deaths.
Australia has so far reported a total 28,337 cases and 909 fatalities.
