Coronavirus Australia: NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant reveals the wrong call that led to crisis

NSW’s top health official has revealed her team underestimated the spread of coronavirus in western Sydney in the days before the city locked down.

Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant told a parliamentary hearing today that “with the benefit of hindsight” it would have been better to lockdown sooner.

“With the benefit of hindsight, I think it’s easy to say there was a greater risk of a seeding event in south-western Sydney than was appreciated at the time it emerged,” she said.

Dr Chant was referring to a superspreader birthday party in western Sydney, which Health Minister Brad Hazzard said was the single event that put the city on a path to locking down.

The hearing began just over an hour after Dr Chant announced the State’s worst-ever daily coronavirus numbers, with 356 new local cases, and more than six weeks after the Sydney lockdown began.

She revealed that after the spread of the Delta strain of coronavirus was first discovered in Sydney’s eastern suburbs on June 16, she waited nine days before advising the Government to lock down the area.

Dr Chant said she advised the Government to lockdown parts of the city and the eastern suburbs on June 25, advice it followed the same day.

The following day, the entire city was locked down, again on the advice of Dr Chant.

The top doctor said she provided the Sydney lockdown advice in written form but that there had been verbal discussions of locking down earlier.

Mr Hazzard said the initial spread in the eastern suburbs appeared to have been successfully suppressed.

But locking down became an inevitability when authorities discovered the virus was spreading fast in the city’s west after a Bondi resident went to a birthday party in West Hoxton on June 19.

The extent of that spread started emerging on June 23 but health officials believed they had the situation under control, Dr Chant said.

“The initial intelligence was that the West Hoxton party was effectively controlled and everyone immediately contacted within the timeframe,” she said.

• NSW records 356 new virus cases and four deaths
• Another 20 COVID-19 cases in Victoria
• WA’s unvaccinated residential aged care workers face $20,000 fines

The hearing at times got testy, with Mr Hazzard complaining the committee had asked them to give testimony while he and Dr Chant were busy dealing with the outbreak.

At several points, he called questions asked to him and Dr Chant “silly” and even said one question by committee chair and Greens MP David Shoebridge was “wrong, out of order and a waste of time”.

Mr Hazzard frequently jumped in to reply to questions that were directed at Dr Chant.

“I’m the minister and I’ll answer,” Mr Hazzard said in reply to one question directed at Dr Chant.

At another point in the hearing, Mr Hazzard appeared to get annoyed at Labor MP Courtney Houssos for interrupting him.

“Let me finish my answers or I’m not going to bother,” he said.

Mr Hazzard also told Mr Shoebridge that it was “inappropriate” of him to challenge Dr Chant’s health advice, which led Dr Chant to respond: “It is appropriate.”