Sydney celebrates its 106-day lockdown Sunday, residents have re-emerged to celebrate a long-awaited “Freedom Day”.
In NSW, some lockdown restrictions officially ended at midnight on Sunday, so, the business has been relaunched, said Dominic Perrottet, prime minister of the state. The non-essential retail re-opened their doors, local Australians have lined up to get haircuts, visited 24-hour retail stores, and headed to the gym since the early hours of the morning.
“I see it as a day of freedom. It is a Freedom Day, it is. Businesses are opening up. But that means it needs to be done in a measured and safe way,” Perrottet added.
The prime minister asked everybody right across our state to treat everybody with respect and take personal responsibility. In addition, the top official reminded people the inoculations would make lockdowns a thing of the past.
Australia needs to learn to live alongside the pathogen, vaccination rates are the key, the health authorities insist. So far, NSW’s vaccination rate sits at 73.5 percent of the over-16 population having received both doses, and 90.3 percent had received at least one dose.
On the eve of “Freedom Day”, the state recorded 496 new locally acquired cases of COVID-19 and eight deaths in the same period.
The neighbouring state of Victoria recorded 1,612 new locally acquired cases in the 24 hours to midnight Sunday and recorded a further eight deaths.
