South Australia shuts its border to entire state of Queensland

SA’s borders are now closed to the whole eastern seaboard of Australia after slamming shut to the entire state of Queensland on Sunday.

South Australia has now shut its border to the entire state of Queensland, following an updated travel direction.

SA has prohibited travellers from entering the state unless they have an exemption or are an essential traveller. SA residents are allowed to return home but must quarantine for 14 days.

An updated cross border travel direction was issued by SA Police at 2.30pm on Sunday.

The blanket border ban on arrivals from Queensland comes after the detection of a Covid case in Cairns.

Cairns and neighbouring Yarrabah have been plunged into a three-day lockdown after a case was infectious in the community for 10 days.

All three eastern mainland states – including NSW and Victoria, which are both in full lockdown – are now shut to SA, as the Delta variant continues to wreak havoc in those states.

It comes as Treasurer Rob Lucas said while SA was still doing better than other states, vaccination was the key to avoiding future lockdowns.

“The number of businesses and individuals impacted by lockdown demonstrate clearly why mass vaccination as soon as possible is critical to maintaining our enviable record of minimising the number of days under lockdown,’’ he said.

Police monitoring arrivals from Brisbane at Adelaide Airport in Adelaide, Monday, August 2, 2021. Picture: The Advertiser/ Morgan Sette

Last week, a top epidemiologist warned the state needed to become “Fortress SA” to protect the public and the economy from the dangerous Delta Covid-19 variant, which has sent east coast capitals into lockdown.

UniSA Professor Adrian Esterman said even with a moat mentality, more lockdowns here are likely this year until vaccination numbers are substantially higher.

He noted Western Australia had adopted a hard lockout position to states that had community cases and it had served WA well.

“I would certainly consider going into Fortress South Australia – we should be extremely careful about anyone coming in,” Prof Esterman said.

“We know this strain is twice as transmissible as the Alpha strain and appears to be much more transmissible through droplets in the air so you can get it by passing someone, which we haven’t seen with other variants.

“There is also some evidence it gives a more severe infection.”

South Australians wanting to return home from places with community infections would need strict pathways, he said.

“It would depend on their vaccination status – if they were fully vaccinated it would not be a major issue to have them self-isolate at home,” Prof Esterman said.

“Otherwise they would have to do strict quarantine in medi-hotels – if we want to keep this out of South Australia we have to be more careful than usual.”