What a difference a weekend makes. Victoria’s 17-day streak of “doughnut days” is no longer the nation’s biggest pandemic talking point, as a small outbreak of locally transmitted cases in northern Adelaide became a full-blown cluster. “What we are facing is, indeed, a second wave,” South Australia’s Chief Public Health Officer Professor Nicola Spurrier says. “But … we are in very, very early days.”

In echoes of Victoria’s devastating second wave, Professor Spurrier says a quarantine hotel for returned travellers was ground zero for the outbreak. SA Premier Steven Marshall moved swiftly, capping funeral attendances at 50 and shutting a host of businesses, including gyms, for at least a fortnight from midnight tonight. Other states lined up to declare SA a hotspot, throwing doubt on the Morrison government’s plans to have Australia’s internal borders all but open by Christmas.