Culture

Time To Rank Your Top 5 Friends: Lockdown Restrictions Set To Ease In NSW On Friday

"The biggest threat to the New South Wales community is complacency."

Lockdown

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Following on from Scott Morrison’s three-stage plan to lift lockdown measures, Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced NSW will be easing some more restrictions from Friday. 

Not since the days of MySpace ‘top 8’ have we all thought so much about our friends and how they are ranked in our lives. But with the slow process of lockdown restrictions starting to ease, it’s meant that we have to pick and choose who we might want to see first. This will be an issue again from Friday, when NSW will see some more restrictions eased, following on from the Prime Minister’s announcement of a three-stage plan to ease COVID-19 lockdown.

NSW will adopt some of the stage one measures, but does not plan to implement all measures immediately. People will be able to have 5 visitors at one time to their homes, and outdoor gatherings of up to 10 people will also be allowed. Sorry to anyone’s ‘sixth or eleventh friend’, you miss out this time. Cafes and restaurants will also be allowed to have people dining in, under the proviso that it is kept to 10 customers inside at a time.

Children will be allowed to play in outdoor playgrounds, and outdoor gyms will also be open, with people encouraged to practice good hygiene, and sanitise equipment. Religious gatherings and places of worship will be allowed to have 10 people, the same amount for weddings, while funerals can have 20 inside and 30 outside. However, NSW won’t be adopting the stage one measure of allowing local and regional travel.

When announcing the changes, Berejiklian warned that people shouldn’t get complacent. “I want to say this to the community – if there is evidence or if there is data that shows either a huge spike, then we have to go backwards. Similarly, if the data shows us that we’re doing better than expected, we can move forward a bit faster. That’s why I don’t want to go beyond what we have already said today, because it is a bit of watching and acting.” So its not time to go hog-wild, and still stay safe out there.