Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has announced that the state border will be opening up to parts of New South Wales starting from 1:00 AM on October 1st – but only to five (5) additional local government areas.
Residents from the following shires will soon be allowed to travel freely between NSW and QLD – effectively bringing the extended border zone to include 41 postcodes from the former:
- Byron
- Ballina
- Lismore
- Richmond Valley
- Glen Innes
Queensland residents will also be allowed to enter the listed areas. New South Wales residents, however, will be required to apply for a border pass before they can actually hit the road.
This decision comes in light of some dramatic improvements on the global pandemic front. At least on the domestic side of things. As of today in NSW, there have been no new locally acquired COVID-19 cases for the first time in 76 days; while QLD currently only has 16 active cases of the novel coronavirus.
“I think this is a great effort to consider how we can make our border zones more effective,” says Premier Palaszczuk.
“These areas have a lot in common with Queensland, they do a lot of their business in Queensland so we believe this is the right measure to take.”
“There have been no cases in those border areas for quite some time,” says QLD Chief Health Officer Dr Jeannette Young.
“There have been no cases north of Sydney for quite a while.”
Progress certainly is in the air right now. South Australia has also announced it will officially open its borders to NSW starting from midnight tomorrow (23/09/20). And as per the estimation of Dr Jeannette Young, if the trend of declining / no new cases continues, we could potentially see further easing of restrictions as early as this Friday.
We’re almost there, Australia.
Now get ahead of the Queensland border opening up again by reading all about the best QLD hotels coming in 2020.
