New coronavirus cluster in Adelaide: Tasmania, Qld, NT and WA close borders to SA as cases hit 17
Adelaide Airport is in chaos as four states shut their borders to SA after the number of COVID cases hit 17 – including two aged-care workers. SA Health has released an alert for a swathe of locations.
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Tasmania, the Northern Territory, and Western Australia have slammed their borders shut to South Australia, causing chaos for travellers on Monday.
Queensland will also close its borders to travellers from Adelaide from 11.59pm on Monday night after the state’s COVID-19 cluster grew to 17 cases.
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Victoria has declared SA a hotspot but has not closed its borders yet, while New South Wales remains open to SA but will be monitoring the situation.
Hundreds of passengers at Adelaide Airport were left confused as they waited for flights to the states that have introduced border restrictions to SA.
It comes as SA Health released an urgent alert for a swathe of locations across Adelaide’s northern suburbs, including bus routes, bus stops, a major shopping centre and a swimming complex.
Any travellers from SA to Qld and the NT will need to quarantine on arrival.
Tasmania’s Premier Peter Gutwein announced his state would be implementing new border measures with visitors from SA, urging anyone who had entered since November 8 to self isolate at their hotel or place of residence for 14 days.
Victoria has declared SA a COVID hotspot – SA arrivals will be interviewed and may require rapid testing but the border will not be closed at this stage. South Australians will be able to freely drive to Victoria.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the border between NSW and South Australia would remain open for now.
“I don’t think it is a sensible approach moving forward to shut your borders every time there is an outbreak. We are in the pandemic. We know there will be outbreaks,” she said.
Anyone who has travelled from SA to Tasmania since last Monday, November 9, has been asked to immediately self-isolate in the state at home or in their hotel.
Mr Gutwein said the “health and safety of Tasmanians is our top priority”.
“With the outbreak escalating in Adelaide, we are taking immediate precautionary action this morning,” he said.
Tasmania joins Western Australia, which has already imposed two weeks quarantine on all passengers flying in from SA.
WA Premier Mark McGowan took to Twitter at midday on Monday to say the state was “assessing further options based on our expert health advice”.
“I strongly urge anyone about to leave Adelaide for Perth to reconsider their travel. More to come,” he wrote.
Chief medical officers from all states and territories had a virtual meeting at midday on Monday with a focus on SA’s cluster.
Australia’s Acting Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly has offered all support and resources SA may require.
AGED CARE, FAST FOOD WORKERS, STUDENTS AMONG NEW CASES
Fifteen of the new cases are part of the original family cluster that was revealed on Sunday and is believed to have stemmed from a medi-hotel. Two more cases are linked.
Two of the cases are linked to AnglicareSA home at Brompton, while another infected individual works at Hungry Jack’s at Port Adelaide, which has closed.
The Brompton agedcare home has closed to visitors after two employees tested positive. They are now in quarantine in a medi-hotel.
The aged-care home is undergoing a full deep-clean. No residents or staff have symptoms, AnglicareSA said.
All residents are now in isolation and all staff working onsite will do so in full PPE.
AnglicareSA has also limited access to all of its residential care settings for aged care and disability services for the next 48 hours.
Another new case is a Year 8 student at Thomas More College at Salisbury Downs, which has closed until further notice.
The school will undergo deep-cleaning as SA Health begins contact tracing. Close contacts of the student will be advised if they should self-isolate.
Mawson Lakes primary and preschool had already closed out of “an abundance of caution” after a student was found to be a close contact of a confirmed case.
The cases are the first community transmission in the state since April 15.
ALERTS FOR SWATHE OF ADELAIDE LOCATIONS
SA Health has released an urgent alert for a swathe of locations across Adelaide’s northern suburbs, including bus routes, bus stops, a major shopping centre and an aquadome.
Anyone who visited these locations on the dates and times specified should monitor themselves for symptoms but do not need to self-quarantine.
They should get tested immediately if symptoms appear.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has offered Australian Defence Force support to SA, and officials from the National Incident Centre to support contact tracing efforts.
A Defence Department spokeswoman told The Advertiser about 100 ADF personnel were currently in SA supporting the state’s COVID-19 management measures but more could be sent.
“If requested, Defence stands ready to provide further support,” she said.
Defence has so far helped states with support for emergency management planning, contact tracing, repatriating Australians returning from overseas, quarantine compliance management, testing support, and logistics tasks.
An aged care response centre has also been stood up, with more announcements expected later today.
Mr Morrison spoke to Premier Steven Marshall and Professor Spurrier this morning.
Speaking on radio, the Prime Minister said the cluster in Adelaide was “very concerning” but he hoped SA would use the lessons from Victoria’s second wave to shut down the outbreak quickly.
“We’ve already stood up the aged care response centre, just like the one we had in Victoria,” Mr Morrison said.
“More broadly across SA, they have engaged in very significant testing in the last 24-36 hours and there are large numbers that have been placed into isolation this morning.
“I think it’s a reminder that even after a lockdown, even after all this time the virus hasn’t gone anywhere, and it can be activated.
“None of us can be off our game, we have to stay match-fit all the time.”
Mr Morrison expected more states to announce border closures to SA today.
“These are always temporary measures in my view and they need to be done on the basis of health advice,” he said.
VERY DANGEROUS SITUATION: PREMIER
Premier Steven Marshall told ABC Radio Adelaide we are going to have a “very anxious” 24 to 48 hours.
“This is a very dangerous situation – time is of the essence. It’s really a very worrying situation and we must act swiftly.”
“It’s a nasty disease.”
The Premier said he did query whether there should be regular testing of medi-hotel workers.
He was told it was better to rely on people to monitor their own symptoms and seek testing as required.
He said he had “every confidence they will get on top of this”, as SA had successfully tackled clusters before – such as the one in the Barossa. But he stressed that the people of SA had to cooperate by getting tested if they experienced any symptoms.
It comes after SA recorded three COVID-19 cases in one day on Sunday, the worst SA cluster to date, all stemming from a medi-hotel on Waymouth St in the CBD.
BREAKING #Adelaide no of #coronavirus cases linked to #Parafield cluster risen to 17, @SAHealth chief public health officer Professor Nicola Spurrier tell @FIVEaaBreakfast. Mawson Lakes PS and Hungry Jacks Port Adelajde now closed. Up from 3 #COVID19 cases yday. 'V serious'
— Andrew Hough (@andrew_hough) November 15, 2020
The initial cluster is a large family with members working in high-risk areas such as medi-hotels.
On Sunday evening several others in the family were displaying symptoms – that number has now grown. Hundreds of more people in the northern suburbs have potentially been exposed to the virus. Scores of staff at Lyell McEwin Hospital, where one of the patients was tested, have also been told to quarantine.
CASE NUMBERS JUMPED OVERNIGHT
Chief public health officer Professor Nicola Spurrier this morning said that with the number of cases jumping to 17 the situation was “very serious”.
“We had a lot of pathology testing done yesterday,” Prof Spurrier told ABC Radio Adelaide this morning.
“We just kept getting positives coming off the machine,” she said.
She said it was “very clear” the cluster was linked with the CBD medi-hotel, where one of the infected people worked.
“We haven’t got the genomics yet, but I’m absolutely certain it has come from a medi-hotel,” she said.
Police Commissioner Grant Stevens this morning said SA authorities could be forced to implement “quite wide restrictions”, maybe “similar to what we saw in March” if this cluster gets too out of control. But that would much depend on how bad it becomes.
“We’re not changing any of ours (border restrictions) at the moment,” he told ABC Radio Adelaide this morning.
“We are trying to lock this cluster down.”
On Sunday, Prof Spurrier said detailed contact tracing began after she received the positive lab results for one of the patients, a woman in her 80s, at 12.30am.
She said the Parafield cluster was already considered more dangerous than the Thebarton outbreak earlier this year, because it involved multiple public venues.
Prof Spurrier said it was too early to rule out whether people at the Adelaide Oval Christmas Pageant on Saturday had been exposed.
Shoppers who were at the Parafield Plaza supermarket centre between 10.30am and 11.30am last Thursday have been told to get tested.
The woman aged in her 80s spent 20 minutes shopping at the centre that day.
Also infected are an adult child of the woman in her 80s, and that person’s partner – one of them works at Peppers medi-hotel holding quarantined patients.
An alert was issued about Yatala prison saying a staff member had also tested positive.
Mandatory testing every seven days has now been implemented for all staff and guests at all medi-hotels, because of the likelihood the family member’s work there was the source of the outbreak.
Prof Spurrier said on Sunday the new cases were “very troubling”. She said the patients had a very large family, spent a lot of time together, had many close family contacts and jobs in highly sensitive workplaces.
The 80-year-old woman is believed to have been infected last Tuesday. She started showing symptoms two days later on November 12 but was not tested until November 14.
A “large effort” in contact tracing began early on Sunday, Prof Spurrier said, with dozens of tests on family members already carried out.
A media conference at 3.15pm was delayed by 15 minutes as testing was returned confirming the two additional cases, a woman in her 50s and a man in his 60s.
Prof Spurrier said any South Australian with flu-like symptoms should immediately present for a test.
“This is exactly when we need people with symptoms to be tested,’’ she said.
The Parafield cluster emerged when the woman in her 80s, now at the RAH in a stable condition, was tested at the Lyell McEwin Hospital emergency department. SA Health has urged anyone who was in that department between 5:30pm on Friday and 4am Saturday to get tested.
The woman was wearing a mask at the hospital but 90 people, staff and patients, have been ordered to quarantine.
The diagnosis by SA Health is unusual because, of the cases so far identified in SA, only nine were locally acquired and the last was on April 15.
Another case confirmed on Sunday is a man in his 30s who is a returned overseas traveller diagnosed in hotel quarantine.
Prof Spurrier said the Victorian border opening next month was not under review and neither were any crowd number restrictions in SA.
Prof Spurrier said others at Lyell McEwin Hospital may have been exposed.
“Today I am urging anyone in SA with any respiratory symptoms to get a COVID-19 test,’’ she said.
“There has been a drop-off in testing numbers… This is the only way we are going to be able to stamp this out.”
High-risk sites where the family members work have been contacted, including in the health care, aged care and corrections sectors.
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