Shoalhaven city Mayor Amanda Findley has called for greater clarification over who is considered an essential worker after a painter from Sydney visited Goulburn while infectious with COVID-19.
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Premier Gladys Berejiklian urged workers to exercise "common sense" when deciding if they are an essential worker.
A mandate has ben put in place for people living in Fairfield who travel outside their local government area to perform essential work to have a COVID-19 test every three days.
But Mayor Findley said the lockdown was impacting on regional communities like the Shoalhaven and that the NSW Government had the ability to clarify who is considered essential.
"It is important for NSW to give the clearest of directions and not just continue to leave things up to the goodwill of the citizens," said Mayor Findley.
"Lack of clarity will undoubtedly lead to further spread of the virus.
"When COVID-19 cases leak out of the locked down environment it is of a high concern to regional Australians who feel a higher level of vulnerability due to the varying degrees of health care that is available."
Kiama MP Gareth Ward said people should not be coming to the Kiama electorate if they're not essential workers.
"We are imploring the public to use some common sense but tragically it seems that common sense ain't that common," he said.
"The public health orders are there for a reason and action can be taken if people are coming to our community to undertake work that can be done from home.
"You have to be an essential worker. That means you have to be travelling out of a hotspot to our area for a specific reason or your employer has looked at all other options including having people that may live in a non-locked down area doing the job that you can do.
"So we can have all the rules in the world but in the same way that locked gates only keep out honest people, we can't have a rule for every single circumstance or situation."
He said the government had made it clear that people who are in a locked down area, whose work is not essential and can be done from home, should be done from home.
He also said his office was taking the situation day by day.
"So far so good. We haven't seen any cases of community transition in Shellharbour or Kiama in quite some time," he said.
"For me I still don't believe that Shellharbour should be locked down because we haven't seen cases of community transition.
"But rest assured that we have the medical experts and the expertise to throw everything we have to at this virus but what is most important is that people follow the health advice."
Mayor Findley said Shoalhaven council had undertaken scenario planning to enable quick responses during times of emergency via its Local Emergency Management committee (LEMC).
"The LEMC has addressed a COVID operational plan, should things escalate quickly in the region and we have seen the results of that collaborative planning when pop up testing clinics have been required and traffic managed," she said.
South Coast MP Shelley Hancock was contacted for comment but had not yet replied.
