Canterbury-Bankstown Mayor Khal Asfour has voiced his concern that COVID-19 testing facilities set up in south-west Sydney may not cope should Fairfield’s case cluster continue to grow.
“We don’t want to be like Fairfield where we had a schmozzle and I am concerned people in our city, if it was to spill over and see dramatic increases, I am concerned that the government doesn’t have the manpower to man enough testing stations,” Mr Asfour told Channel Nine’s Today show.
“They haven’t seemed to be able to prepare for this virus. They have always been one step behind.”
He said the government needed to have a contingency plan in place and have enough staff to cope with the growing number of people being tested.
An online community forum held last night saw more than 440 local residents voice their concerns about the growing Fairfield cluster and the treatment of local residents directly to NSW Premier, Gladys Berejiklian.
“They spoke to the Premier directly and asked her questions – it was good to hear from the Premier directly but the reality is it’s a bit late. We should have been doing this a few weeks ago. It broke out in the eastern suburbs, we’ve been in lockdown three weeks now and only now the Government has started talking to multicultural communities,” the Mayor said.
“What I wanted was for our community to speak to the Premier, which they did, but there’s been a lack of communication. Our community felt they were targeted – we had Polair, the dog squad, mounted police checking our our community and yet in the eastern suburbs we see people walking around, shoulder to shoulder.”
Meanwhile, testing queues have eased across the area this morning, with three 24-hour testing facilities now set up in Fairfield to cope with the new three-day testing requirement.
While residents were forced to wait up to eight hours to be tested yesterday, this morning testing is being completed in under an hour.
Fairfield Mayor Frank Carbone said that after the municipality had experienced a “traumatic” 24 hours, extra resources on the ground today were very welcome.
“If you live in Fairfield, get out and get tested,” he said.
“We’re all in this together. We want to come out of this together and we want to do it as soon as possible and I think this will assist us to give confidence not only to our city but to the whole of Sydney and NSW, that Fairfeld is doing the right thing and we can isolate the virus.”
Meanwhile, a nurse at Sydney’s Westmead Hospital has tested positive to coronavirus with health authorities now scrambling to determine where she caught the virus.
NSW Health confirmed today that the staff member was fully vaccinated and was now isolating at home.
“Urgent investigations into the source of the infection and contact tracing are ongoing,” NSW Health said in a statement.