A Hunter woman was fined for breaking quarantine over the weekend.
Police were carrying out a compliance and welfare check at Lake Macquarie on Saturday and found only 3 of 4 residents were at home.
The woman who had skipped out on home isolation was tracked down at a Kurri Kurri premises and directed to return home.
She was also handed a $5,000 Penalty Infringement Notice for braking her quarantine.
NSW Police Deputy Commissioner Gary Worboys said it was one of 940 infringements handed out in just 24 hours over the weekend.
“In the last 24 hours over 5000 people right across the state were checked to make sure they were complying with their isolation orders, these are people that are directed to stay at home, these are positive cases, these are close contacts, these are people who clearly know they have to isolate at a location,” he said.
“5000 of those people were checked in the last 24 hours by Australian Defence Force and police teams. One of those locations was at Lake Macquarie there were meant to be four people at that premises but there were only three people that came forward and presented to police.”
“One of those people were later found at an address at Kurri Kurri which is some distance away,” said Deputy Commissioner Worboys.
“That person was directed to return back to her residence which she did and was issued a $5,000 Penalty Infringement Notice.”
“People need to understand if you are under one of these orders or directions, that you need to stay put, that you need to do what is asked of you because the actual presence of police in terms of inspecting that you are where you should be is not a routine thing,”
“These inspections continue throughout the day and night and in this instance where we have someone who clearly puts people at risk and goes outside the agreement that has been reached, we will put that to the top of the list, police will risk assess where they need to be and that particular residence with those four people inside of it will now be checked on a more frequent basis to make sure compliance is achieved.”