NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has warned it could take until the end of the week before COVID-19 cases across Sydney begin to drop under the new restrictions.
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Today, under the tougher new lockdown, tradies across Greater Sydney will down tools - the first time the construction industry has closed in the state since the pandemic began.
It's better news in Victoria where Premier Daniel Andrews says there are no new chains of transmission in the state.
Although he warned it was too early to tell if Victorians could avoid an extension of the current five-day lockdown.
New COVID-19 case figures for both states should drop this morning.
There has been a call for National Cabinet to make vaccinations compulsory for hospital staff.
Catholic Health Australia, which represents Catholic not-for-profit hospitals, said every year healthcare staff are required to get vaccinated against the flu but yet there is no such directive for COVID.
"The high transmissibility of the Delta variant of COVID is putting workers and the people they care for at greater risk as well as putting extra strain on staff," CHA's health policy director James Kemp said.
"We need a single, uniform rule across Australia for everyone working in a hospital environment."
Overseas and the death toll from Europe's floods continues to rise.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel described the flooding as "terrifying" after the death toll across the region rose to 184 as a district of Bavaria was battered by the extreme weather.
About 110 people have been killed in the worst-hit Ahrweiler district south of Cologne. More bodies are expected to be found there as the flood waters recede, police say.
The European floods, which began on Wednesday, have mainly hit the German states of Rhineland Palatinate, North Rhine-Westphalia as well as parts of Belgium. Entire communities have been cut off, without power or communications.
In North Rhine-Westphalia at least 46 people have died, while the death toll in Belgium stood at 27.
In sport, there has been a virus scare for the Australian Olympic athletics team which was put into lockdown for several hours over the weekend because of a staff member's inconclusive COVID-19 test.
But tests later on Sunday confirmed the person is not infected and the team's Tokyo preparations in Cairns are going ahead as planned.
While two South African soccer players have become the first athletes inside the Olympic village to test positive for COVID-19.
In nine hours time England will wake to "Freedom Day" - that is the day COVID-19 restrictions lift across the country.
Despite a surge in cases, rising by about 50,000 a day, restrictions will lift as the government puts its faith in its vaccine program - around 87.8 per cent of the adult population is vaccinated with one dose and 67.8 per cent have had two.