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".
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.
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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."