Regional Covid risk just as high: Police Commissioner Grant Stevens

The Police Commissioner says country residents must realise they are “just as much at risk” from Covid as their city counterparts, as new exposure sites are announced.

Country residents must be just as alert to the risk of a Covid-19 outbreak after several scares involving sick interstate truck drivers, the state’s coronavirus chief warns.

In a new warning, Police Commissioner Grant Stevens told The Advertiser there was a wrong “perception that some of the regional areas in SA don’t have Covid”.

It comes as SA Health warns two additional exposure locations have been identified linked to a positive truck driver last week.

Neither business is considered a public exposure site and staff have been contacted and tested today.

All close contacts associated with the sites are in quarantine.

A group of five infectious truck drivers from Perth, NSW and Victoria, visited regional roadhouses, pubs, hotels and warehouses last week.

Exposure times for two sites - the Cross Keys Hotel at Cavan and the OTR at Pinnaroo - were added overnight. The Pinnaroo site has since been removed.

As a result, 538 people have been ordered into quarantine, after they were linked to more than two dozen high-risk exposure sites.

Mr Stevens, who authorises all changes as state Covid co-ordinator, said he “did not hold the view” that country areas should have special rules.

“I can’t tell you if we have Covid in South Australia today,” he said. “And if it was here I couldn’t tell you where it would be.

“It just as likely to be in a regional community as it is the wider metropolitan area.”

“It doesn’t matter where you are in South Australia you can do you bit by checking into businesses (with QR codes), wearing a mask in indoor public places and if you have symptoms get tested. And if you’re eligible for a vaccine, get vaccinated.”

He added: “We’d like, to think people who are in those quieter parts of South Australia … take their obligations as seriously as we would like to see in the wider metropolitan area.

“I think what we’ve seen with these truck drivers is that the regional parts … are just as much at risk as any other part of South Australia. We had positive truck drivers travel through Port Augusta, Penong (on the Eyre Peninsula), and Ceduna. We’ve had them in Tailem Bend.

“This is a signal to everybody that we’re all equally at risk of having Covid in the community without knowing it. So QR code check-ins and getting tested applies to all South Australians regardless of where you live.”

There were two new overseas acquired cases of Covid on Sunday, a woman in her 50s and a man in his 30s, both reported from a medi-hotel.

The man has an old infection. There are six infection patients in the CBD’s Tom’s Court facility.

Chief public health officer, Professor Nicola Spurrier has urged visitors, including to the Cross Keys and Cavan hotels, in Adelaide’s north, to quarantine and seek urgent testing after the NSW truckies, in their 20s and 30s, visited last Monday.

Exposure times at the Cross Keys, which has adult entertainment, was eight hours from 6.15pm to closing time at 2am, according to an SA Health alert issued at 1.20am on Saturday.

But SA Health on Sunday night updated these times for between 6.45pm and 8.15pm.

Prof Spurrier had said the precise times were unclear because contact tracers were unsure how long the truckie had spent in the bar.

The state’s transition committee, which has started long term planning for life at 70 and 80 per cent of adults being vaccinated, will debate various public restrictions on Tuesday including wedding rules.