Wagga residents who are unvaccinated or not fully vaccinated will lose some of their freedoms for about seven weeks under a "tough" roadmap to open up the state and prevent future mass lockdowns.
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Wagga residents aged over 16 who do not have two jabs or do not have a medical exemption will lose the right to have a sit-down meal in restaurants, take part in community sport, browse in retails stores and use services such as gyms and hairdressers from October 11.
Many of those restrictions on people who are not fully vaccinated will be removed on December 1.
NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro said it was "crunch time" for people to get vaccinated if they wanted to avoid months of restrictions.
"Freedoms are only for the vaccinated," he said.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and and Mr Barilaro on Monday announced the schedule for lifting COVID-19 restrictions as double-dose vaccination rates rise, including opening up travel between Sydney and regional areas.
"At 80 per cent double dose vaccinations, we can confirm that is when you will be able to travel freely throughout NSW. We envision that to be by the end of October," Ms Berejiklian said.
Wagga MP Joe McGirr last week said he was concerned that allowing people from Sydney to travel to regional NSW presented a risk to areas such as Wagga with full vaccination rates below the NSW average.
Mr Barilaro said on Monday that Dr McGirr had been one of the reasons behind lifting the regional travel threshold from 70 to 80 per cent full vaccination.
"Dr McGirr's concern was about the 70 per cent rate, so we took that into account. There were a number of MPs and other communities and mayors relayed that message to us," Mr Barilaro said.
"That's why we moved the regional travel from 70 per cent to 80 per cent. We're very confident that by then, the averages will be very close."
Dr McGirr, who unsuccessfully pushed for regional areas to have their own roadmaps out of restrictions, said holding off on Sydney travellers until 80 per cent vaccination "was a big improvement".
"It means that we will have a higher level of vaccination and it will give us some extra weeks to catch up," he said.
"The supply of vaccines is improving, we're on a roll in terms of community acceptance, we just need a few more weeks."
Murrumbidgee Local Health District (MLHD) recorded no new COVID-19 cases as of 8pm on Sunday night.
The MLHD has performed 36,851 tests over the past four weeks including 8463 within the Wagga City Council local government area.
Wagga has stayed out of lockdown despite three more people testing positive across the MLHD over the weekend, but thousands of people could potentially return to take-away only and click-and-collect shopping under the NSW roadmap.
As of Monday, up to 41 per cent of eligible Wagga residents had not been fully vaccinated.
Mr Barilaro said people who have not been fully vaccinated by the time 70 per cent of NSW has received second jabs would see their freedoms "move backwards".
"We have been lucky in the regions but that is not sustainable long term. If we want to talk about no more lockdowns, vaccination is the key," Mr Barilaro said.
"For a period of time, regional people have had freedoms, and we fought hard for that, but there is going to be a period of time that unvaccinated people lose those freedoms but it's so that we never, ever have another lockdown that destroys the economy, jobs and the wellbeing of the community."
Dr McGirr said the roadmap's methods of pushing people towards vaccination were "reasonable" and he was glad to see that unvaccinated people would still be able to attend religious services.
Both Ms Berejiklian and Mr Barilaro have warned that NSW will likely see higher numbers of hospitalisations and possibly deaths from COVID-19 in the regions as restrictions were lifted.
Dr McGirr said Wagga's health system was ready.
"I am in regular communication, they are preparing and provided we keep the disease under control, I'm very confident that the health system will manage," Dr McGirr said.
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