COVID-19 restrictions will be assessed on “month-by-month basis”

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian, NSW Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant and NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller have held their daily press conference about COVID-19 and reported “a stabilisation of new cases”.

There are currently 2734 coronavirus cases in NSW with 48 new cases recorded in the last 24 hours.

Premier Berejiklian said restrictions in place due to COVID-19 will be assessed on a month-by-month basis, based on health advice.

“I said yesterday that social distancing will be a part of our lives until there was a vaccine or a cure and that’s absolutely the case but I also want to stress that social distancing is different from restrictions and we get data on a daily basis from our health experts, and every month, our health experts will give us advice as to whether there is an opportunity for us to relax any of the restrictions.

“I want to assure the community that if we did go down that path, it would be based on health advice and we are going to assess that on a month-by-month basis,” said Ms Berejiklian.

“If the advice in a couple of weeks time is that there might be a couple of aspects that we can tweak to provide relief to our citizens, well then, we’ll take that advice.

“But that comes with risk and I need to be very up-front about that.”

The Premier said that restrictions were having a “positive” impact and gave a strong warning about the risks associated with easing restrictions.

“Every time you relax a restriction, more people will get sick. More people will die,” said Ms Berejiklian.

“When you do lift any of the restrictions, it does mean that there will be more people who will be admitted to our hospitals and more people who will succumb to the virus.”

Premier Berejiklian also said that NSW had “doubled” its intensive care capacity and hard work was happening behind the scenes to do more.

“We’ve doubled our capacity and our aim is to triple and quadruple our capacity so that our hospital system is well prepared for what awaits us down the track.”

Police Commissioner Fuller said NSW Police will be “out on our roads making sure that people adhere to the orders around the Easter holidays”.

“The big focus will be on our country roads, backstreets, main highways, the caravan parks right across country NSW.”