SA closes borders to all mainland states and territories except Victoria as virus breaks out around Australia
South Australia’s borders have been immediately closed to all mainland states and territories except Victoria, and tighter Covid rules within SA are likely on Monday.
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South Australia has slammed its borders shut to all states and territories except Tasmania and Victoria, and new restrictions on gatherings are looming as the dangerous Covid Delta strain spreads like “wildfire” across the country.
Chief public health officer Professor Nicola Spurrier announced SA was facing its “biggest threat since our first wave” and the virus could rip through the community in “tinderbox” conditions unless new local restrictions were enforced.
Just after 3pm on Sunday, SA’s borders shut to Queensland, Western Australia, the Northern Territory and ACT as the Covid situation rapidly deteriorated.
Exemptions are available for essential travellers, people returning home to SA or permanently relocating to the state and people fleeing domestic violence.
They will be ordered to quarantine for 14 days.
Prof Spurrier this morning said 29 people from a mine site in Northern Territory, which is at the centre of a Covid outbreak, returned to SA in recent days.
“They’ve all been contacted, they’ve all been asked to quarantine along with their families, and when I went home last night we had results back from 11 of those people. They were all negative, and I haven’t had any bad news on my phone this morning,” Prof Spurrier told ABC Radio Adelaide on Monday morning.
Five positive cases have been recorded in relation to the Tanami Desert mine outbreak.
The hard border with NSW remains unchanged after the state recorded 30 new Covid cases on Sunday, while all travellers from Victoria must now isolate before returning a negative test. This requirement was initially just for Greater Melbourne but was expanded to all of Victoria on Sunday.
Premier Steven Marshall declared “decisive action” was needed to protect the state, while foreshadowing new restrictions to prevent Covid “seeding” into the community.
“We know that there has been a very significant deterioration in the situation around Australia with a very dangerous Delta variant,” Mr Marshall said.
“We need to be extraordinarily vigilant in South Australia at the moment, so we’re pleading with people here in our state, if they develop any symptoms whatsoever to go and get themselves tested.”
Mr Marshall said restrictions on home gatherings, density levels in public spaces and aged care visitors were likely to be announced on Monday.
“We are thinking of moving for a higher level of restrictions internally in South Australia for a one-week period,” he said.
“There’s nothing neat and tidy about a global pandemic, the restrictions that have been put in place I know will be massively disrupting.
“But the consequences of not being decisive, the consequences of not taking action could be disastrous on us here in South Australia.”
Prof Spurrier revealed SA’s transmission potential was now even worse than at the beginning of the first wave last year, justifying the need for new restrictions.
“This is an enormous wake-up call. This is the biggest threat we’ve had in South Australia since our first wave,” she said.
The delta strain’s high transmissibility potential is Prof Spurrier’s main concern.
Three new cases of Covid-19 were detected in SA on Sunday – a man in his 40s and two girls.
They acquired the virus overseas and remain in hotel quarantine.
Prof Spurrier on Sunday also revealed a “hair-raising” moment when one person from the trio that illegally flew into Coober Pedy tested positive to Covid-19.
“One of those people did in fact test positive on our GeneXpert … however swabs have been brought down this morning and retested and those are indeed negative,” she said.
“So that was a false positive.”
Travellers who were already in the air when borders closed were allowed to enter SA but have to submit to Covid tests on days one, five and 13.
Travellers had not been advised on their flights of the new border restrictions.
Amirah Bennett flew from the Gold Coast on Sunday afternoon to see her grandparents Phil and Pauline Parrish and godmother Mim Frisina for the first time in a year-and-a-half.
“My daughter was really worried that the plan was going to be turned around,” Mrs Parrish said.
Mr Parrish said he was “absolutely rapt” Amirah had beaten the border closure.
Anne Ryan and husband William arrived from Perth for a holiday on Kangaroo Island with her Victorian brother
“I wasn’t sure if we were going to make it actually, I thought we might be on the next flight home,” Mrs Ryan said.
“We were meant to do it two weeks ago but Victoria went into lockdown so that was the end of that, and now Perth is in lockdown, so we’ve decided we’re not going anywhere after this.”
Hannah Crossman was pleased her 5pm flight from Perth was changed to 12.40pm, meaning she dodged quarantine.
CASES DETECTED IN NSW, QLD, NT AND WA
On the first day of a two-week lockdown for Greater Sydney, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced 30 new locally acquired cases, all linked back to the Bondi cluster.
Meanwhile, parts of the Northern Territory – Darwin, Palmerston and Litchfield – will go into a 48-hour lockdown, after four new cases were recorded on Sunday.
And WA Health Minister Roger Cook announced Perth and Peel would go into stage one restrictions on Sunday, after a woman from Perth tested positive to the Delta variant after a trip to Sydney.
AFL fans were locked out of Optus Stadium, after spectators were banned from Sunday’s clash between West Coast and the Western Bulldogs.
Covid restrictions are also returning to Queensland, after two new cases of community transmission on Sunday.
Victoria recorded no new locally acquired cases.
The number of new cases across the country has also seen the trans-Tasman travel bubble paused.
SA has already closed its borders to most people entering from NSW from Wednesday, June 23.
Travellers from Sydney were asked on Saturday to self-quarantine for two weeks after the NSW lockdowns triggered new rules in SA.
People in SA who have been in the Greater Sydney area, including the Blue Mountains, Central Coast and Wollongong areas between 12.01am on Monday June 21 and 11.59pm on Wednesday are subject to the new requirements.
SA Health says affected travellers should self-quarantine for 14 days, have Covid tests on days one, five and 13 and wear masks at any time when in contact with the public.
It comes after the SA government reintroduced restrictions with Victoria on Friday afternoon, banning anyone who had been in areas affected by the NSW breakout, including essential travellers, South Australians returning home and those seeking to relocate here.
People fleeing domestic violence can still cross state lines but must quarantine for a fortnight and take Covid-19 tests on days one, five and 13.
‘Bleeding’ regions plead for lockdown respite
By Elizabeth Henson and Gabrial Polychronis
The State Government should examine a plan to remove the long-suffering regions of South Australia from snap lockdowns and restrictions, key country MPs say.
Narungga MP Fraser Ellis said “more clarity” was needed about SA’s path out of the pandemic and its impact on the regions.
“Considering regional SA has not had an outbreak over the duration of the emergency but has been subjected to the same restrictions as metro areas, perhaps a plan to remove restrictions in regional SA is a good place to start,” said Mr Ellis, whose membership of the Liberal Party is suspended while he fights a travel allowance scandal.
Mount Gambier MP Troy Bell agreed, saying regional SA had to be treated differently and had suffered undue hardship throughout Covid-19.
“It just seems ridiculous to me that if there is an outbreak in the city, places that would be 450km away would have severe restrictions put on them when there’s no health risk and low threat of transmission,” Mr Bell said.
The independent MP said more “clarity” was needed on the state of emergency powers and “when those powers are going to return back to the democratically-elected people”.
Since March last year, Police Commissioner Grant Stevens has acted as the state co-ordinator under the Emergency Management Act, giving him sweeping powers to impose snap border closures, quarantine measures, various Covid restrictions and the ability to enforce the QR check-in system. The powers were used on Sunday afternoon to impose immediate border closures on Queensland, Western Australia, NT and ACT. The emergency declaration continues to be extended on a rolling basis and is reviewed every 28 days.
A state government spokesman reaffirmed its plan to ensure SA keeps the “lightest restrictions in the nation, if not globally”. “We will not keep restrictions in place a second longer than necessary during these unprecedented times but it remains important the government is able to progress protections for the health and safety of South Australians very quickly when needed,” he said.
Mr Ellis said the impact on the regions of snap lockdowns and restrictions was significant. “We still have small regional pubs struggling with capacity, small business and volunteer groups struggling to enforce QR code check-ins and community events operating under extremely onerous SA Health Covid management plans,” he said.
Mr Stevens said for the emergency declaration to be revoked, authorities would need to be satisfied that the various Covid measures were no longer required. Chief public health officer Professor Nicola Spurrier also expressed concerns for SA’s remote Indigenous community in the wake of NT’s lockdown.
Home quarantine push for international business travellers
By Miles Kemp
Business leaders should have “a level playing field” with celebrities and politicians who can travel overseas using home quarantine for Covid-19, says SA-Best MLC Frank Pangallo.
Mr Pangallo has written to authorities about the problems of carrying out business overseas when 14-day medi-hotel quarantine is the only option.
“The government needs to start showing flexibility,’’ he said.
“Why is it OK for politicians to go over and do business and be allowed to quarantine at home and not medi-hotels, but the same special flexible exemptions do not apply to business people who have to manage their significant interests overseas regularly?”
He said being “holed up” in a hotel meant they didn’t have the resources to do their work. Yet home quarantine was allowed for Prime Minister Scott Morrison when he took a group of 30 guests to the G7 in the United Kingdom, as well as actors, tennis players and the head of submarine builder Naval Group, who travelled to SA from France.
Mr Pangallo, pictured, urged the federal and state governments, and business lobby groups, to back a new deal for business leaders. He gave the example of San Remo pasta head Pas Ferraro, who must travel to Italy up to eight times a year to do business and manage plants.
Despite exemption approval from authorities, he would undergo up to 112 days in medi-hotels in Adelaide. “They’re a huge international company with a number of plants in Italy where they make and distribute products globally and back here,” Mr Pangallo said. “To quarantine in medi-hotels on his return he would spend half the year in a hotel room.”
An SA Health spokeswoman said, with few exemptions, “people arriving in SA from overseas are required to complete mandatory supervised quarantine in an SA Health-approved medi-hotel for 14 full days and nights, under rules set by the Commonwealth Government”.
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