From Saturday January 8 until January 27 singing and dancing will be banned in hospitality venues, while some elective surgeries will be postponed.

Classes for singing and dancing will continue and those activities can also continue at weddings.

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Major events would continue except in situations considered high-risk by NSW Health.

Wollongong MP Paul Scully said the changes would help ease the burden on the health system but called on the government to be "more transparent" with what health officials were really telling them.

He believed many people were still questioning why the Premier decided to lift restrictions in December, only to now bring some of them back.

"If this is the Premier's version of success I'd hate to see his version of failure," Mr Park said.

"From the people I've spoken to, there seems to be a lot more practice going on voluntarily [of staying at home, wearing of masks in all settings]. In some respect there's a bit of a de facto lockdown going on with people staying away from venues, events unless they're absolutely necessary."

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He said many people - including his close circle of friends - were being cautious and cancelling plans with friends in fear of catching the virus.

"What would be helpful at the moment, is if the government would be more transparent around what the chief health officer and other health officials were saying," Mr Park said.

"I call again for the government to make some of that health advice available to the public so people can best judge it for themselves."

Member for Keira, and Shadow Minister for Health, Ryan Park welcomed the "backflip" on restrictions and said it was "an extraordinary one".

"Three weeks ago we warned that the health system was at breaking point and the Premier rejected that assessment," Mr Park said.

"We have always said that the government should be governed by the health advice and Dominic Perrottet had clearly been ignoring the health advice for the last month."

During Friday's announcement, the Premier also encouraged venues to stop patrons "mingling" while residents were encouraged to move gatherings outdoors where possible.

Kiama MP Gareth Ward, who is currently at home battling the virus, said whilst we need to learn to live with COVID we can't ignore it either.

Booster shots were also to become mandatory frontline health workers and teachers, though Mr Ward felt that measure should be extended to politicians.

"Politicians can't ask of others what they're not prepared to do themselves," he said.

The other major announcement was to report positive results from rapid antigen tests (RAT) to Service NSW or NSW Health going forward. There will be a service available for this from mid next week.

Those who receive a positive RAT result must isolate as per the rules that apply for a positive result on a PCR test.

Mr Perrottet said 50 million more RAT tests were due to arrive in the state next week, with more details on distribution to come.

He said modelling for hospital capacities showed that even on worst case scenario the hospital system could cope.

"Today we're announcing that we will continue to suspend elective surgery for non-urgent surgeries."

He said category three surgeries - those non-urgent in the next 365 days would be postponed until mid-February.

"We'll be engaging with private hospital systems to help with capacity constraints over this period of time."

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