Sydney Records 239 New Local COVID-19 Cases

CREDIT: Dan Himbrechts/AAP

New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian has been urging Sydneysiders and NSW to use August as vaccination month.

The August vaccination push comes as Sydney records 239 new local cases of COVID-19. This comes from 87,000 tests, 61 people within the community for part of their infectious period. 98 cases are still under investigation.

"Today is August 1st, and I am calling upon the people of greater Sydney, greater NSW to come forward and get vaccinated," she said yesterday.

"To get to the 70 percent target we need 9.2 million jabs. To get the 80 percent target we need 10 million jabs...Pleasingly, in the last 24 hours we had over 82,000 people get vaccinated in one day alone in NSW. At that rate we are vaccinating 500,000 people per week. We want to do more."

"We have the month of August to get our vaccination rates as high as possible."

Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant, Health Minister Brad Hazzard, and Glady Berejiklian have all been vaccinated with AstraZeneca.

"Many people in my family have had the AstraZeneca vaccine, it is a safe vaccine and it works."

"We know that the more people get vaccinated the closer we are to living life as normally as we can with the Delta strain."

Health Minister Brad Hazzard has said, "We already have requirements that everybody stay at home...But certainly in these eight local government areas, it's very challenging. So, we're trying to strike the balance, and I think the balance is appropriate."

This was said in regards to harsher restrictions. He also said health authorities are struggling to gain confidence with those in south-west and western Sydney, particular around refugee communities.

"What we're seeing in particular, is refugee family groups are often large families, and often there might only be one or two people in the family who are income earners, and we're seeing a reluctance for them to come to health authorities and say, 'We have a problem in our household.'"

"They worry that they'll be treated the way they might have been treated back home in their own countries. They've suffered greatly in their own nations, in their own countries. What we are trying to do is tell the, if you have got any symptoms at all or have been in contact with positive cases, please come forward to Health."