A teenage boy in home isolation has been living in a plastic bubble fashioned by his family for three weeks, with no word from health officials. NSW health minister Brad Hazzard has been pressed over how an 18-year-old boy with coronavirus has seemingly been forgotten by health authorities. The apprentice, who lives in Lidcombe — in one of the state’s 12 “hotspot” councils — has been living in a “bubble” separated from his family to avoid spreading.
He added that he had been told the 18-year-old, who contracted Covid from a colleague in mid-August, had actually received “six phone calls”. Mr. Hazzard concluded by exposing people to “be patient” while commending the NSW health system. “The world is in massive stress, the entire world, the New South Wales system is still doing far better than almost anywhere else in the world, and we have a rising number of cases.”
Meanwhile, police officers, firefighters, and paramedic graduates are being trained to drive ambulances to cope with the pressure, as Premier Gladys Berejiklian warns the worst is yet to come. And in Queensland, an infectious diseases expert has warned another hard snap lockdown to combat the delta variant could be looming, with chief health officer Dr. Jeanette Young confirming it is “unfortunately still a possibility” today.
In the ACT, case numbers jumped to 32 overnight.
While the live blog has now ended, here are the top coronavirus updates from today: