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A DECISION is expected to be made in a matter of days on whether Tamworth will come out of lockdown next week, Deputy Premier John Barilaro said.
The deputy premier flagged that certain local government areas (LGAs) in regional NSW may be able to come out of lockdown sooner than others, but western NSW was still a concern.
"The central west is still concerning ... if the seven days isn't going to be sufficient, we'll go to 14 days, but the crisis committee will evaluate that on the data tomorrow," he said.
"We will be able to inform communities well before Saturday.
"The idea to go LGA by LGA is something we can consider.
"I still think if we had more LGAs that were affected we would look at considering a statewide lockdown, but we're not there yet."
Meanwhile, the number of Tamworth locals who have undergone tests for COVID-19 more than halved in the space of a few days last week.
Hunter New England Health released its latest testing data for the district, that showed more than 6600 people had been tested within the Tamworth local government area in the space of a week.
The data shows testing numbers from Saturday, August 7 to Saturday, August 14.
Despite high numbers of locals getting the swab on Monday and Tuesday, testing numbers dropped to low levels by the end of the week with just 137 people tested on Saturday, compared to 2020 last Monday and 1287 on Tuesday.
It's a similar story for Armidale, which saw testing numbers peak at 1942 on Monday but fall to as low as 355 on Friday.
In the New England North West, 41 per cent of people aged 15 and over have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, while just 18.1 per cent have received two doses as of August 8, according to new data released by the Australian Government.
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NO NEW cases of COVID-19 have been identified in Tamworth and Armidale while western NSW remains on high alert.
NSW recorded 452 new locally acquired cases of in the 24 hours to 8pm last night, with 152,000 tests across the state, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian confirmed.
Of these cases, 18 are from western NSW in Dubbo, Walgett and Bourke which is of "enormous concern", Ms Berejiklian said.
"There is extra support being sent to western NSW to make sure we get on top of the cases there," she added.
Deputy Premier John Barilaro urged everyone in the western part of the state to "go out and get tested".
Of the 452 locally acquired cases, 129 are linked to a known case or cluster, 105 are household contacts and 24 are close contacts, and the source of infection for 323 cases is under investigation.
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NSW Health was notified of the death of a woman in her 70s from western Sydney who had COVID-19 in the 24 hours to 8pm last night.
"In relation to vaccinations, NSW continues to power ahead, can I thank everyone for coming forward and getting vaccinated," Ms Berejiklian said.
"We've hit the mark of 5.2 million jabs in NSW, so we're well on our way of getting to six million jabs by the end of August. That is an outstanding effort.
"We now have nearly 52 per cent of our population across the state with at least one jab."
She said once the state gets to six million jabs "we will able to consider opportunities for what we might be able to do in September and October that we can't currently do."
In the Hunter New England Local Health District, there were 10 new confirmed cases on Tuesday, five of those were in Maitland, three in Lake Macquarie and two in Newcastle.
The community of Lennox Head also remains on high alert, after NSW Health detected fragments of the virus at the Lennox Head sewage treatment plants in recent days.