The home quarantine trial for travellers returning from overseas to Sydney will be launched in the coming weeks and will allow 175 people to isolate for seven days at home instead of in a hotel.
The participants will be selected by NSW Health and may include NSW residents,non-Australian residents and Qantas air crew.
The trial will run for four weeks and only include people who have received two doses of a TGA-approved vaccine.
A timeline for a wider rollout of home quarantine has not been established,but Ms Berejiklian said it would help reunite families before Christmas.
“We envisage things moving rapidly,” she said. “Certain assumptions are being made what the results will be. We will work very quickly to scale it up. We have shown our capacity to make a trial become reality very soon.”
NSW Tourism Minister Stuart Ayres said it was a critical step in phasing out hotel quarantine.
“This will build on the evidence collected through the South Australian trial as part of the national plan where we utilise technology,particularly facial recognition and location-based services apps on your phone,to allow police and health to continue to check in on a person during their home-based quarantine,” he said.
NSW hit the 50 per cent double-dose vaccination rate on Friday as the state inches closer to the threshold to reopen.
“It gives us heart that in some weeks,we’ll reach 70 per cent double dose and enjoy many more things than we can today and start to feel more normal about life at that stage,” Ms Berejiklian said.
Meanwhile,Sydney’s first drive-through COVID-19 vaccination clinic began taking patients on Friday morning with hopes it will boost inoculation rates in one of the worst-affected areas in the state.
A new drive-through vaccination clinic has opened at Belmore Sports Ground in Sydney’s west.Credit:Nick Moir
The facility will operate at the Belmore Sports Ground car park and will offer Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines to eligible people on Fridays,Saturdays and Sundays for the next six weeks.
Earlier this week,Belmore Medical GP Dr Jamal Rifi,who is leading the initiative,said the clinic was “only limited by the amount of vaccine” allocated and could operate seven days a week with state government assistance.
He hopes to be able to deliver up to 1000 jabs a day to people sitting in their cars.
People will be required to make bookings for the clinic through the Hotdoc website. It is the second drive-through vaccination clinic to operate in NSW after one opened in the regional city of Dubbo in August.
Dan Sweetman gets his jab at Belmore on Friday morning.Credit:Nick Moir
ATAGI recommended vaccinations be by appointment only at drive-through clinics,“due to the potentially large demand”,but said patients could be accepted without a booking if capacity allowed.
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