While NSW only has 16 cases with unknown sources, the state is still grappling with hundreds of cases linked to known clusters.
A recent surveillance report from NSW Health goes into further detail of how exactly one Sydneysider managed to infect dozens of people in just a few days.
The report also reveals a total of 320 cases, up to August 15, had been linked to known clusters.
One of the state’s biggest clusters, which started at a funeral in Bankstown, in Sydney’s west, now has 74 cases linked to it.
The cluster began when a woman in her 40s from Fairfield, not knowing she was infected with coronavirus, attended a funeral service at St Brendan’s Catholic Church in Bankstown.
Health authorities are still trying to work out where the woman caught the virus.
Days later, another person who attended the same service attended Mounties Club in Mount Pritchard unknowingly with the virus.
They accidentally spread the virus to another patron at the club before that patron drove several workers to a farm at Peats Ridge on NSW’s Central Coast.
Seven of those farm workers and a number of their close contacts then caught the virus and triggered closures of hospitality venues across Newcastle.
Yesterday, NSW chief health officer Dr Kerry Chant confirmed another household contact of the funeral cluster had caught the virus – taking the total number of cases to 74.
University of NSW Epidemiologist Dr Abrar Chughtai told the ABC the report showed how quickly coronavirus could spread like “wildfire”.
“If somehow there are a few super-spreading events in large clusters, it will spread like a wildfire, so we need to be very careful,” he said.
“This is a constant fight unless we get a vaccine.”
However NSW’s biggest cluster, which started at the Thai Rock restaurant in Wetherill Park, now has 115 cases linked to it.
Three secondary cluster events have been linked to the cluster at Thai Rock Restaurant, including two workplace locations and Our Lady of Lebanon Cathedral, Harris Park.
There were four new cases reported in the week ending 15 August including one case who was a household contact of a Fairfield workplace case, two cases that are linked to the Fairfield primary school, and one case linked to the sporting match.
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