Childcare is made FREE for hundreds of thousands of working parents as part of new plan to help families through Sydney lockdown
Sydney parents will not have to pay for childcare if they keep their child at home during the city's lockdown.
From Monday July 19, childcare centres in locked down areas can waive gap-fees on the days that parents decide not to use them.
The gap fee is the difference between the Child Care Subsidy the Government pays to a service and the remaining fee paid by the family.
Sydney parents will not have to pay for childcare if they keep their child at home during the city's lockdown
Parents who send their children to care still have to pay as normal.
The move allows parents to keep their child enrolled rather than pulling them out of a centre if they don't want to use care during lockdown.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said around 216,000 families across Greater Sydney that access childcare services could benefit from this measure.
'When gap-fees are waived families will not have to pay any out-of-pocket costs for those days that their children are at home during the current stay at home period,' Mr Morrison said.
Which areas qualify for free childcare?
Bayside, Blacktown, Blue Mountains, Burwood, Camden, Campbelltown, Canada Bay, Canterbury-Bankstown, Central Coast, Cumberland, Fairfield, Georges River, Hawkesbury, Hornsby, Hunters Hill, Inner West, Ku-ring-gai, Lane Cove, Liverpool, Mosman, North Sydney, Northern Beaches, Parramatta, Penrith, Randwick, Ryde, Shellharbour, Strathfield, Sutherland Shire, Sydney, The Hills Shire, Waverley, Willoughby, Wollondilly, Wollongong and Woollahra
Sydney's lockdown was extended for another two weeks from Friday as city's outbreak grew to 864 cases since June 16.
Meanwhile, a Covid-infected worker at a Sydney building firm may have exposed hundreds to the virus after turning up for work for two weeks while unknowingly infectious, health officials fear, as the city endures a relentlessly extending lockdown.
An urgent alert is out for anyone who visited the Greenacre firms D&M Excavations and Hanson Concrete Australia in Bullfrog Street at any time between July 1 and July 13, who must isolate immediately and get tested.
It's feared the employee could have come into contact with potentially hundreds of customers and staff during the nearly two week window.
The warning came as NSW Health named a further 32 new exposure sites across the city and beyond, with two new worrying hotspots named in the south of the state.
Sydney and its surrounding regions are nearing the end of a third week of lockdown, which has since been extended until at least July 30 to stem the spread of the Indian Delta variant.
NSW Health have named a further 32 new exposure sites across Sydney and beyond, with two new worrying hotspots named in the south of the state (pictured, a woman walks along a quiet Milsons Point on Wednesday)
Two Shell service stations on the road south from Sydney to Melbourne have been named as close contact sites after a traveller stopped off there while infectious.
Anyone who was at the Shell petrol station in South Gundagai on Thursday July 8 between 1am and 1.30am is a close contact and must go into immediate isolation and get tested.
There's an identical alert for another Shell petrol station close to the Victorian border in Jindera, where an infected person stopped off on Saturday July 10 between 11.10 and 11.45am.
A third Shell service station in Hay in the NSW Riverina region has also been named as a casual contact site.
A worker at Sydney building firm Hanson Concrete Australia in Greenacre may have exposed hundreds of people after turning up for work for two weeks while unknowingly infected with Covid