Within the nation of Australia, parts of regional New South Wales saw their COVID-19 lockdown lifted as of yesterday. With these particular areas having reached the initial stepping stone 70% double vaccination target imposed by the government, a handful of societal restrictions are being lifted, including the ability to visit outdoor public swimming pools.
As of yesterday, vaccinated and unvaccinated people can visit outdoor NSW public pools, however, the number of people allowed to gather differs for these groups. Unvaccinated people can gather in groups of two, while vaccinated people can gather in groups of five. (Daily Mail)
Regardless of vaccination status, swimmers will be held to a two-hour maximum time slot, with changing rooms remaining closed.
However, as the state’s goal is to achieve 80% vaccination by December 1st, the freedoms granted to vaccinated versus unvaccinated people will continue to have stark differences until that time.
“Unlike most cases in the world, if you are not vaccinated you will have to wait at least four or five weeks … in order to participate in things that the rest of us can participate in,” state Premier Gladys Berejiklian said in a televised briefing.
The state of New South Wales has seen 60,561 cases and 370 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. The state’s population is estimated to be 8.2 million people.
NSW pools are open. All they need now are some good swimmers and coaches.
It is like a bad scene from the movie Gattaca. After keeping their entire population jailed for the last 2 years, Australia is now behind California somehow.
our vaccination roll out was slow here unfortuneately.. we couldn’t access them. Anyway, those of us in Qld haven’t had many lockdowns at all. Only parts of NSW and Victoria have had about 200 days of lockdown in 18 months. The rest of us haven’t. . Don’t believe everything you read.
Thanks for the personal viewpoint. All we see on the news in the US about Australia is riots. Goes to show that the news only shows you the worst of worst.
“Segregated” feels like purposefully charged language here. This whole article feels slanted against the restrictions, which the author is within her right to be, but the tone of this article is not even remotely neutral.
Segregation was discrimination on skin color, now on vaccination status. The term is spot on. Kudos to the writer.
Did you just compare segregation to vaccine status? Vaccine mandates aren’t anything new, seek help.
are you okay?? stop using the discrimination of african americans for your anti vax bs