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Local shares fell on Friday as investors make last-minute adjustments to their portfolios ahead of the main index’s rebalancing, while unease over rising infections grows. 
The federal government has labelled seven Sydney local government areas as hot spots, as New South Wales grapples with its recent Covid-19 outbreak. Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly made the announcement on Wednesday afternoon, saying the areas were of “most concern”.
The nationally declared Covid-19 hot spots are Waverley, City of Sydney, Woollahra, Bayside, Canada Bay, Inner West and Randwick.
The LGAs will remain declared hot spots for seven days.
“New South Wales has announced the occurrence of over 30 cases in metropolitan Sydney including cases that have visited Wollongong and one case that landed in New Zealand,” Professor Kelly said.
“Genome sequencing has confirmed that these cases are related.
“With the new Delta variant of concern, there is a higher transmissibility of the virus and results in more public health stringent measures, as have been announced today by the New South Wales government.
“Because of the risk posed by the Delta variant and cases having been in the community, a hot spot definition can come into play so we have offered the New South Wales government support and assistance in relation to that.”
The classification means those LGAs are nationally agreed areas of concern and allows the Commonwealth to provide extra support to NSW as it battles the growing Bondi cluster.
Professor Kelly said the federal government would provide additional assistance to protect aged care residents and provide personal protective equipment from the national medical stockpile.
“We have triggered the single site workforce supplement and we have also provided further support into the public health emergency operations centre in NSW from Commonwealth officials to assist with that co-ordination of response to the aged care sector as we have done.”
The Commonwealth can also assist with contact tracing, he said.
A hotspot is determined by criteria including community infections of a more transmissible variant of Covid-19 and a rolling average of three days with 10 locally acquired cases per day in metropolitan areas.
NSW recorded 16 new Covid-19 cases on Wednesday, bringing the Bondi cluster to 37 infections.
