Sau Tree Services, Sydney COVID infections show Hunter bears brunt of NSW lockdown's limits

Hunter New England Health on Wednesday advised that a tree lopping business had been knocking on the region's doors for roughly two weeks, and that multiple staff members had since tested positive.

These are real people facing the same life-threatening illness that has launched such an unprecedented international evasive manoeuvre, and they deserve some empathy.

But in a tinderbox that can be ignited by even the slightest lapse, the anger at a fresh wave of exposure sites in this region seems justified.

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For a region with "stabilised" cases, it is potentially a hammer blow to the shield Newcastle and Hunter Valley are striving to hold up against the virulence of this strain.

It is also the latest exposure in the region linked to staff coming from Sydney, a state capital purportedly in lockdown to contain the spread of the virus.

The cluster linked to Costco at Boolaroo had hundreds of close contacts. Women defied police to attend parties in the Hunter, prompting the lockdown, while a visit from a COVID-19 case during the 2020 outbreak also sparked a string of exposure sites.

Despite critics calling for ever harder conditions, any lockdown is necessarily porous to some extent. Supermarket shelves do not stock themselves, and two of Wednesday's cases were infected working in the state capital. Tighter restrictions also do not strike everyone equally.

There is a case that this is just a facet of the Delta variant's spread, that it moves before it is detected. Sydney's deepened predicament supports this theory, as does the fact a Newcastle woman travelled to Tamworth while infectious.

While she did nothing wrong and returned to the Hunter before it entered lockdown, New England faced restrictions through no fault of its own. In recent days NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has been clear that the lion's share of cases fall within the local governments of concern in Sydney.

The state's leaders have been clear in the face of tense questions that loopholes shouldn't matter given the intent of their legislation has been clear. There is some merit to that, but as Ms Berejiklian admits, any people doing the wrong thing can ruin the best efforts of a vast majority.

In a sense, rules come second to the need to reduce risk. Being allowed to do something and that being the right thing to do is an important distinction given the stakes. Those furious at news of the tree loppers are less interested in the legality of their presence in the region under public health orders than they are the sacrifices they have made being only the first chapter.

The numbers - cases, exposure sites, Pfizer stocks - remain sobering. All we want is our efforts to count.

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