A health expert has warned that the Illawarra needs to lift its vaccination rates, and fast, as COVID-19 cases continue to rise just over a week before the region begins to open up.
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The Illawarra recorded another 79 infections in the 24 hours to Thursday night: 64 among Wollongong residents, and 15 in Shellharbour.
Of these, just 14 have been linked to known cases.
They bring the current active cases in Wollongong, Shellharbour and Kiama to 681.
Wollongong has the lion's share, at 529 active cases: more than half are in the 2500 postcode, followed by 2502 with 83, 2518 with 71 and 2526 with 57.
The greatest proportion of Shellharbour's 142 active cases are in the 2528 postcode, although that also includes Windang on the Wollongong side of the bridge.
The Shoalhaven also saw 17 new infections, bringing its active cases to 91.
Professor Kathy Eagar, director of the University of Wollongong's Australian Health Services Research Institute, said a reduction in new cases in NSW overall, largely because of numbers falling in the local government areas of concern, had hidden the increases in other regions.
"We're the worst hit, and we're the worst hit because our cases have come from Sydney," Professor Eagar said of the Illawarra.
"So our index cases, where did they start from? Initially, they started in Sydney and they've made their way down the coast.
"And some of that has been through work, but the majority of it has been through people coming for social reasons - families and friends, etcetera."
She believed the recent surge in cases in the region was down to the infectiousness of the Delta variant, a failure to separate the Illawarra from Sydney, and complacency.
Professor Eagar said she had called for the state government to put a "ring of steel" around Sydney with the Illawarra on the outside, but that had not happened.
"The upshot of which is we now have COVID spreading down the coast because we've had essentially just an open door between Sydney and Wollongong," she said.
The region's complacency explained why the Illawarra's vaccination rate was below that of NSW overall, she said, although noted that some areas had high uptake of the vaccine.
Commonwealth data shows the Illawarra had 83.5 per cent of its 15 and over population vaccinated with at least one dose and 57.1 per cent fully vaccinated at September 26; in NSW at that time, 85.5 per cent of NSW residents aged 16 and over had had at least their first dose, and 60.1 per cent had received two.
"We really need to stress to people that going forward, COVID is now a pandemic of the unvaccinated, and by the end of this, everybody in the Illawarra can expect to be either vaccinated, or have been infected," Professor Eagar said.
She said the region was at "serious risk" with the impending end of lockdown, especially coming into summer and the Illawarra being a popular beach destination, especially among south and southwestern Sydney residents.
"We run the risk of both importing more cases from Sydney, and increasing our own case numbers... the risk of infection is lower when people are outdoors, but it is still a risk," Professor Eagar said
"Last year when we had the initial variants of COVID, we didn't have any outdoor transmission.
"But this year with Delta, which spreads through the air, not by droplet, we're actually seeing now cases of outdoor transmission."
The hospitals were already stretched, she said, caring for not only local patients but those from Sydney.
"They will hopefully start to decline, but we can expect to see a lot more Illawarra people needing to go into hospital if we don't get our vaccination rates up at a much faster rate than we're going now," Professor Eagar said.
But even high vaccination rates did not provide a wholly accurate picture of good protection, she said, because the statistics did not include younger children - including those who were ineligible for vaccination.
"We really have to be clear that even when we've got high levels of vaccination, we are going to have to follow all of the sensible COVID advice about masks, social distancing, even though we're going to be coming out of lockdown," she said.
Professor Eager also stressed the importance of continuing to check in with QR codes, to help contact tracers with their jobs, and assuming there was a possibility of contracting COVID at every place people visited.
"As a region, we do have a long track record of working together really successfully, and we have act like one big community in managing this," she said.
"It really is a risk to us as a community, unless everybody is looking after each other."
The Illawarra Mercury has repeatedly sought an interview from the Illawarra Shoalhaven Local Health District regarding its plans to manage the rising cases, but the district has not provided access.
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Natalie Croxon
Reporter at the Illawarra Mercury, mostly covering social affairs. Previously of the Bendigo Advertiser, Northern Daily Leader and Quirindi Advocate. Our Watch award winner.
Reporter at the Illawarra Mercury, mostly covering social affairs. Previously of the Bendigo Advertiser, Northern Daily Leader and Quirindi Advocate. Our Watch award winner.
