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Undercover COVID inspectors are heading out on an eight-week compliance blitz across Sydney, posing as mystery shoppers at more than 1000 venues.

The Liquor and Gaming officers are looking for coronavirus breaches such as employees not wearing masks and people failing to check in with QR codes as new data reveals Victorian residents are slacking off.

The data – released by the government – showed only 41 per cent of visitors to hospitality venues checked in every time the visited.

READ MORE: Hopes high that Sydney will dodge lockdown despite search for mystery origin case

Liquor & Gaming Director of Compliance Dimitri Argeres said most businesses are complying, however, a number of venues misusing the Dine and Discover vouchers can expect action to be taken against them by officers.

"With thousands of businesses across the state part of the scheme, it is now more important than ever for these venues to be COVID smart and COVID safe," Mr Argeres said.

"While we are looking at compliance with the Dine & Discover rules, our focus remains on venues doing the right thing in terms of COVID safety."

Liquor & Gaming compliance officers will be out undercover this week conducting inspections across hundreds of different venues across NSW. The program quietly began on Wednesday.

READ MORE: UK to ease holiday travel ban to 12 countries, including Australia and New Zealand, but keeps most quarantines

Harsh consequences will apply to anyone found breaching the COVID requirements, including fines of up to $5000 and venue closures for repeat offenders.

"A key part of compliance for hospitality businesses is the requirement customers sign in using the Service NSW QR code," Mr Argeres.

"Now is not the time to get complacent, the COVID safety requirements are in place for a reason, and all venues need to make sure they are fully compliant."

The crackdown comes as authorities race to find the source of a recent new outbreak in Sydney, with the source of infection of a man in his 50s currently unknown.

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Health authorities are still trying to uncover the mystery COVID-19 case at the centre of the current outbreak that has NSW on edge.

But although the hunt is ongoing, there are rising hopes Greater Sydney will dodge a snap lockdown for Mother's Day after no new cases were found anywhere in the state on Friday from 13,339 tests in 24 hours.

Authorities have firmly turned their attention to Haymarket restaurant XOPP, where it's thought a man in his 50s from Woollahra — dubbed Patient X after he became the first new case this week — may have crossed paths with the missing link.

READ MORE: WA to permanently halve its hotel quarantine intake

Patient X and his wife are the only two confirmed cases in the cluster.

Just 500m from the XXOP restaurant is the Park Royal Darling Harbour quarantine hotel. And on the day Patient X and his wife dined at XXOP, a returned traveller from the US who had the same strain as the couple was in quarantine at the Park Royal.

It's suspected the traveller may have passed on the virus to a quarantine worker, who may be the missing link.

However it's not known what role the mystery case played in the hotel quarantine system, making it harder for authorities to find them.

Making matters even worse for contact tracers is the fact that a very low number of diners actually scanned the QR code to "check in" to XOPP when Patient X ate lunch there.

CCTV shows up to 100 guests inside the restaurant but only a handful of them signed in. As a result, anyone who was at XOPP on Wednesday April 28 between 1.30pm and 2.30pm must get tested.

https://twitter.com/NSWHealth/status/1390473045983207424?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly said the fact there were no new local cases nationally on Friday was promising and urged people to continue getting tested.

"And the more we see the chances are we may see some more cases and we certainly need to work out that chain for the person we know arrived on 24th April … the Sydneysider, and his wife, that have become positive without an obvious link there. But clearly it's the same virus."

With the search for the mystery case continuing, masks and increased restrictions will remain in place across Sydney.

Until at least Monday, authorities have ordered those in Greater Sydney, the Illawarra and Blue Mountains to wear masks when at public indoor venues and on transport, and placed limits on the number of visitors allowed in a private home or at public gatherings.

With the centre of the outbreak being a returned traveller, the situation again raises questions about the effectiveness of the hotel quarantine system and procedures currently in place.

According to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald, six out of the 150 people who tested positive for COVID-19 in hotel quarantine in the past three weeks were said to have been fully vaccinated overseas before their arrival in Australia.

The six vaccinated cases had received a variety of the different shots available, including both the one-dose Johnson & Johnson jab as well as the two-dose Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Moderna injections.

This highlights the role of the vaccine in reducing the need for hospitalisation due to the virus but a reminder that it doesn't eliminating catching the disease.

It also raises questions about being able to effectively implement a vaccine passport system for return travellers.

First came the amazing pictures, then the video. Now NASA is sharing sounds of its little helicopter humming through the thin Martian air.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California released this first-ever audio Friday, just before Ingenuity was set to soar on its fifth test flight.

The low hum from the helicopter blades spinning at more than 2,500 revolutions per minute is barely audible. It almost sounds like a low-pitched, far-away mosquito or other flying insect.

READ MORE: Mars rover snaps selfie photo with Ingenuity helicopter

That's because the 1.8-kilogram helicopter was more than 80 metres from the microphone on the Perseverance rover. The rumbling wind gusts also obscured the chopper's sound.

Scientists isolated the sound of the whirring blades and magnified it, making it easier to hear.

The sound was recorded during the helicopter's fourth test flight on April 30.

Ingenuity — the first powered aircraft to fly at another planet — arrived at Mars on Feb. 18, clinging to Perseverance's belly. Its first flight was April 19; NASA named the takeoff and landing area Wright Brothers Field in honour of Wilbur and Orrville, who made the world's first airplane flights in 1903. A stamp-size piece of wing fabric from the original Wright Flyer is aboard Ingenuity.

The US$85 million ($108m) tech demo was supposed to end a few days ago, but NASA extended the mission by at least a month to get more flying time.

Friday afternoon's test flight was aiming for twice the altitude — as high as 10 metres. The helicopter was also headed to a new touchdown spot.

With the helicopter's first phase complete, the rover can now start hunting for rocks that might contain signs of past microscopic life. Core samples will be collected for eventual return to Earth.

Britain announced a "first tentative step" Friday toward resuming international travel, saying UK citizens will be able to travel to countries including Portugal, Iceland and Israel later this month without having to quarantine upon their return.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said the country's current blanket ban on overseas vacations will be replaced on May 17 by a traffic-light system classifying countries as low, medium or high risk.

The "green list" of 12 low-risk territories also includes Gibraltar, the Faroe Islands and the Falkland Islands — but not major vacation destinations for Britons such as France, Italy, Spain and Greece, which are on the "amber" list.

READ MORE: Aussie's heartbreak living in country with world's worst COVID rates

Britons travelling to those countries, and many others including the United States and Canada, will have to self-isolate for 10 days when they return.

Britons hoping for an overseas vacation this summer without a quarantine do not have a lot to choose from. Several countries on the green list are still closed to British visitors, including Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. Others are little-visited, such as the remote islands of Saint Helena, Ascension Island and Tristan da Cunha.

"This is not a list generated and created to think about where people want to lie on beaches and then twist the science to fit it," Shapps said at a news conference.

He said the list would be reviewed regularly and would likely be expanded.

"We in this country have managed to construct a fortress against COVID. But the disease is still prevalent in other parts of the world, most notably at the moment in India," he said.

"That's why today's announcement, removing the 'stay in the UK' restrictions from May 17, is necessarily cautious," he said.

All but essential travel from Britain remains barred to "red list" countries with severe outbreaks, including India and South Africa, and people returning from them face 10 days of mandatory quarantine in a supervised hotel. On Friday the British government added Nepal, the Maldives and Turkey to that list.

Turkey's addition, which takes effect Wednesday, throws into doubt the ability of players and fans to travel to the Champions League soccer final between two English teams — Manchester City and Chelsea — which is due to be played in Istanbul on May 29.

Shapps said the government was "very open" to holding the game in Britain, but that it was a decision for soccer's European governing body, UEFA.

May 17 is the next date on the British government's roadmap out of lockdown. Pubs and restaurants in England can reopen indoor areas that day, and venues including theatres and cinemas can welcome limited audiences.

Britain has recorded more than 127,500 coronavirus deaths, the highest toll in Europe. But recent infections and deaths have plummeted thanks to extensive lockdowns and a rapid vaccination program. Two-thirds of UK adults have received at least one vaccine jab and almost a third have had both doses.

The campaign has relied heavily on the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, whose use has been restricted in some European countries because of a potential link to extremely rare blood clots.

In a change of advice, British authorities said Friday that people under 40 will not be given the AstraZeneca vaccine if another shot was available.

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation said people aged 30 to 39 without underlying health conditions should receive an alternative vaccine, "where available and only if this does not cause substantial delays in being vaccinated." Last month it gave the same advice for people under 30.

"Any vaccine offered early is preferable to a vaccine offered too late," said Wei Shen Lim, who chairs the JCVI, an expert body that advises the government.

England's deputy chief medical officer, Jonathan Van-Tam, said the government expects to follow the new advice and still meet its target of giving everyone 18 and over a vaccine jab by July 31.

"We have to maintain the pace and scale of the UK vaccination program," Van-Tam said, adding that the AstraZeneca vaccine is safe and effective and "thousands are alive today" because they received it.

Britain is also using vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.

British health officials say the risk from COVID-19 far exceeds any risk from the AstraZeneca vaccine for the vast majority of people, but the calculation is "more finely balanced" for younger groups, who tend not to suffer serious illness from coronavirus infections.

Up to April 28, Britain's medicines regulator had received 242 reports of blood clots accompanied by low platelet count in people who had received the AstraZeneca vaccine, out of 28.5 million doses given. There were 49 deaths.

The AstraZeneca vaccine, which is cheaper and easier to store than Pfizer or Moderna, is critical to global immunisation campaigns. It is a pillar of the UN-backed program known as COVAX that aims to get vaccines to some of the world's poorest countries.