A new locally transmitted COVID-19 case has been recorded in eastern Sydney, according to reports, as authorities desperately try to track down the source of the infection.
A person in the Bondi area has returned a positive test, media reports say, with the source of the infection unknown.
NSW Health is expected to issue a new COVID-19 alert shortly.
It comes as the department also investigates a potential hotel quarantine breach, after two cases in adjacent rooms returned identical viral sequencing results.
It's unclear how and where transmission occurred from a couple to another returned traveller who were all staying on the fourth floor of Sydney's Radisson Blu quarantine hotel.
Genomic sequencing has shown all three cases have identical viral sequences of the Alpha strain (B.1.1.7), NSW Health said.
"At this stage we still don't know if it happened on the plane, transporting from the plane to the accommodation, at the accommodation or whether it was just a coincidence," Premier Gladys Berejiklian told reporters on Wednesday.
The couple, who were asymptomatic, tested positive to COVID-19 on a routine day two test on June 3, NSW Health said in a statement.
The other returned traveller returned a negative day two test on June 3, before subsequently developing symptoms and testing positive for COVID-19 following a test on June 5.
The three cases were transferred from the Radisson Blu to the Special Health Accommodation, where they remain.
All three arrived in Sydney on the same flight from Doha on June 1 and stayed in adjacent rooms in the quarantine hotel.
NSW Health said there was no evidence of further transmission.
"Out of an abundance of caution, all returned travellers who were on the same floor of the Radisson Blu hotel between June 1 and June 5 and were subsequently discharged are being contacted and asked to get tested and isolate at home pending further advice from NSW Health."
All staff who worked on the fourth floor of the hotel between June 1 and June 5 have been asked to get tested and isolate pending further advice.
Meanwhile, NSW Health says it administered a record 17,223 COVID-19 vaccines in the 24 hours to 8pm on Tuesday, including 6048 at the vaccination centre at Sydney Olympic Park.
The total number of COVID-19 vaccines administered in NSW is now 1,737,557.
© AAP 2021
Image Credit: Nick Ang, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons