It's COVID-19 deja vu with new permit system

We might have been doing exceedingly well, helped largely by the ability to easily close international borders, but such a thing was bound to happen.

This virus has shown an incredible ability to seize the most isolated of opportunities; and when that happens, the threat of a blow-out in case numbers follows close behind.

Suburbs on Sydney's northern beaches are now the focus of what will yet again be a gargantuan effort to stamp the virus out.

That's not overstating the challenge. The experience in Victoria showed just how quickly a few can become many.

Victoria triumphed, this time, but this insidious disease still left a tragic mark, with hundreds of people losing their lives.

It makes for an easy case for the tightening of restrictions, to try to do whatever is possible to halt the spread of the virus that in turn will allow for effective, achievable contact tracing.

But once again our community is going to feel the impact of something that is hundreds of kilometres away.

COVID-19 simply wasn't about in the four months the NSW-Victorian border was closed and yet Albury-Wodonga suffered substantial disruption.

Certainly, the closure played a role in, at the very least, deterring people from travelling to the Border region and, in so doing, add another layer of protection against outbreaks locally.

It was tough though, exceedingly tough.

And now we have the news that Victoria will require permits for anyone wanting to travel from NSW.

The focus will be on stopping the virus from spreading out of Sydney by not allowing permits to be granted to residents of those affected suburbs.

On that score, it doesn't seem the permit regime will be anywhere near as severe as what we experienced when it was NSW who closed the border.

But there will be problems for our community, so we must be patient and, likewise, governments again must be cognisant of our unique situation.