Freedom, here we come!
In her daily press conference on August 3rd, New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian outlined a rough target for when we might finally be able to close the chapter on the frustrating and ongoing lockdown situation.
Speaking to the press, she highlighted the fact that the vaccine rollout is likely our best way out of the current predicament, as the state recorded 199 new locally acquired COVID-19 cases in the 24 hours to 8:00pm yesterday (August 2, 2021).
Berejiklian said that she wanted to see increased numbers of people fully vaccinated, and is aiming for the state to hit a total of six million vaccination doses by the end of August.
“Six million jabs is roughly half the population with at least one or two doses,” she said, adding that we “should” reach that target based on current vaccination rates.
She noted that some lockdown restrictions may be eased if NSW hits that target.
Six million doses would “give us additional options as to what life looks like on 29 August,” she said.
August 29 is when the current lockdown across Greater Sydney, The Blue Mountains, Wollongong, and the Central Coast is set to end.
“We’re at 3.9 million [vaccinations],” she said.
“I suspect we’ll be at four million by the end of the week or in the next few days and that’s a target I’d like to set for New South Wales.”
With a population of 8.1 million, NSW has already administered some 3.9 million doses of the vaccine, covering 40.1 per cent of the population. 19 per cent of people in NSW are now fully vaccinated.
The state has been administering somewhere between 60 and 90 thousand vaccines per day for the past few weeks – although yesterdays numbers were as low as 25,000. If that rate continues at its highest level, we could see 2.5 million doses given over the next four weeks, easily breaking that six million target.
The Australian federal health officials are, however, confident that NSW can consistently deliver 92,000 vaccines per day. At that rate, we could be on track for 70 per cent coverage of first dose vaccinations by early September.
Berejiklian stated in her press conference on Sunday that “once you get to 50 per cent vaccination, 60 per cent, 70 per cent, that triggers more freedoms”.
“We can turn this around in four weeks,” she said.
The federal government has recently put in a new vaccine rollout strategy that aims to have restrictions removed when the nation hits 80 per cent of adults above the age of 16 with two doses. They estimate this could be done by about December, though are obviously cautious about making any promises that they could be held accountable to.
Berejiklian has flagged motivators to encourage people to get vaccinated as a key driver of the rollout.
“We know if we encourage people to get vaccinated to provide them with additional freedoms that that is the best motivator of all,” she said.
“We’re focusing on what we believe people want at this stage. They want peace of mind that they can move more freely, send their kids to school, work.
“So any incentives around those things we think are great motivators so we’re looking at those options.”
“We don’t know if we’ve peaked or it’s going to get worse,” she said.
“We need everybody to work hard to get the case numbers down and also to get our vaccination rates as high as possible.”
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