Sydney a ghost town again [Source: 9News]

Residents of Greater Sydney, the Central Coast, the Blue Mountains and Wollongong are now subject to stay-at-home orders after coronavirus lockdown restrictions were extended.

Residents will only be allowed to leave home to shop for essential items, exercise or for care and compassionate reasons.

Work or education that can not be performed at home is also an exception.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian said her hands had been tied by the escalating outbreak of the Delta variant after “putting everyone on notice” a wider Sydney lockdown could be imposed earlier today.

“I said that this the scariest time since the pandemic started and that’s proven to be the case,” Ms Berejiklian said

“We need to take to keep our citizens safe, and even though we don’t want to impose burdens unless we absolutely have to, unfortunately, this is a situation where we have to.”

Twenty nine locally acquired cases of COVID-19 were detected in the 24 hours to 8pm last night, 17 of which we already knew about.

Twelve cases were previously unannounced.

COVID-safe weddings can take place this weekend, but they will be banned from Monday.

Funerals can still go ahead, the premier said.

Ms Berejiklian said some restrictions would be imposed on parts of regional NSW not in lockdown.

Those restrictions include no more than five visitors in your home, seated hospitality, one person per four square metre rule, 50 per cent capacity for outdoor events, indoor mask wearing and restrictions for funerals and weddings.

Health officials are bracing for more cases in the days ahead.

Ms Berejiklian said her team would review the situation after one week to see if the lockdown could end sooner.

“Given how transmissible the virus is, given the extra exposure venues, we know that even the best contact tracers in the world can’t stay a step ahead unless we put this in and we need to do it properly.”

However, the premier left the option to extend beyond two weeks open when asked about a goal of zero community cases.

“I just want everybody to brace themselves,” the premier said.

“The best advice we received today is that it will take two weeks.”

She said transmissibility of the Delta variant is “at least double” previous variants.