Premier Calls for Business to Help Hospitals

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has called on local businesses and manufacturers to produce key medical supplies, personal protective equipment and hand sanitiser to help supply the state through

“We also appreciate that given what’s occurred around the world that the supply of medical equipment isn’t what it used to be,” said the Premier.

“New South Wales relied on many different sources of equipment, including many different sources from overseas, which no longer exist, or have been massively disrupted and so today I’m calling on the great people of our state, those great business people, those manufacturers who are able to retool, to consider retooling to help supply those additional things we’ll need in coming months,” she said.

“Whether it’s sanitisers, medical equipment and a whole host of other things which our hospitals rely on in the coming months and we say this because we have confidence in the people of this state,” she said.

“We know many companies have started retooling, many companies that used to construct other things are building bottles, or converting their product to sanitisers, so we know that’s already occurring, but today we formally start the process and this morning businesses can log on, or any individual, which needs support in retooling or would like to explain what they are doing in retooling can simply go onto nsw.gov.au and there is a special portal for them with information on the types of products we’d like to see manufactured in New South Wales,” Premier Gladys Berejiklian.

There has also been a hotline established for businesses if they can’t access the internet:  13 77 88.

The Premier also cautioned people not to just look at the daily figures of coronavirus cases.

“We have to remain vigilant, do not look at the number of cases and whether they are up or down on a day, because it doesn’t take long, it doesn’t take much for things to get out of control,” said the Premier.

“At this stage we are still to an extent controlling the spread, containing the spread, but we know we can’t do that forever because this virus is virulent, it spreads really really quickly and unfortunately to effectively and therefore we have to remain vigilant, we can’t let our foot of the peddle, we can’t relax,” she said.

“From a medical perspective things will get worse, we are going to see more cases, we are going to see more people in the community need hospitals, and we need to make sure our hospitals are ready, we need to make sure we have everything we need to take care of the number of people we anticipate may get sick

“We need to contain the spread as much as we can, reduce the number of people that need hospital at the one time, so that we can take care of everybody in the way that you’d expect,” said Gladys Berejiklian.

Dr Jeremy McaNulty confirmed there were 2,182 people with coronavirus in NSW, there have been 150 new cases, 103,361 people have been tested and 9 deaths.

A 95 year old lady from the Dorothy Henderson Lodge is the ninth person who has died in NSW.

Additional testing is being rolled out to some general practitioners and today there will be a clinic established in Bondi.

Commissioner Mick Fuller said there were 3,000 Australians in self-isolation in hotels and they expect another 700 Australians to return today, who will also be placed into hotel isolation.