A TRAVELLER who returned home to Newcastle is among seven new coronavirus cases in NSW less than 24 hours before the Victorian border closes.
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NSW Health confirmed the male patient was a recently returned traveller "who tested negative on day 10 of quarantine, but developed symptoms on his return home to Newcastle on Sunday, after being released from hotel quarantine in Sydney".
The health authority said the man and his close contacts are in isolation.
All of the other six new cases were returned travellers entering quarantine.
In a statement shared with the media this afternoon, Dr David Durrheim commended the man for immediately asking Hunter New England Health for testing after coming down with very mild symptoms of the virus.
"This is a really good reminder to all of us that at this stage when we have had an influx of people from Melbourne and possibly from the hotspots there, that if we develop any symptoms of cold or flu that we should immediately make sure we don't spread it in the community and get ourselves tested," he said.
More than 50 per cent of people who show symptoms of COVID-19 have them by day 5, with 98 per cent showing by day 12.
It's "very rare" for someone to develop symptoms this late, Dr Durrheim said.
Hunter New England Health last recorded a fresh case on April 22, when public health physician Dr David Durrheim said the virus would have to be imported to the area to flare again.
By early June the region had no active cases.
Health authorities determined that a case that closed Green Point Christian School on the Central Coast late last week as a precaution was actually a recovered, non-contagious case.
The confirmation of a Newcastle case comes hours before the NSW-Victoria border closes at midnight for the first time in more than a century to contain the southern state's fresh waves of cases after irregularities around its quarantine practices emerged.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the border closure was "a necessary step".
"We wouldn't have taken this step unless we absolutely had to," she told reporters on Monday.
"Please know this is not a decision we take lightly, but during the pandemic I have always said New South Wales will have a no-regrets policy."