WA COVID case: States left in the dark over positive case for seven hours
Outgoing Perth resident Gail Peters, transiting through Sydney on her way to New Zealand, described scenes of “mayhem” in the city when the lockdown was announced.
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For residents of Perth arriving at Sydney Airport on Monday, it was a different reception party than they may have been expecting.
NSW Health and police were on the scene of the arrivals terminal, with the former checking temperatures, previous movements and the nominated quarantine locations of passengers.
For Manpreet Singh, a five-day quarantine comes after a fortnight of hotel quarantine in Perth. The Sydney resident arrived there after spending five months in India, after Aussie border restrictions left him stranded during a family visit.
“It’s a bit hard but we’ve got to do it for the safety of the people,” he said. He acknowledged the extra five days of quarantine in NSW had come as a shock, learning about it the night before arriving in his home state.
“After five months away I have a lot to do, so to be told another five days is a shock - but it’s worth it,” he said.
Outgoing Perth resident Gail Peters, transiting through Sydney on her way to New Zealand, described scenes of “mayhem” in the city when the lockdown was announced by Premier McGowan on Sunday.
“It was mayhem, people parking in gardens (so they could go) panic buying, there was no toilet paper left,” she said.
Asked what she thought of the Premier’s snap decision to lock the border, she said: “He was probably right but I do think he panicked a bit.”
STATES LEFT IN THE DARK OVER WA COVID CASE
West Australian health officials left other states in the dark about a highly infectious case of COVID-19 in the community until several hours after a scheduled meeting to discuss the virus.
Despite the male hotel quarantine worker returning a positive test shortly after midnight on Sunday, WA officials did not raise the matter in an Australian Health Principal Protection Committee (AHPPC) meeting about seven hours later.
The AHPPC, which includes representatives from every state and territory health department, as well as infectious disease experts and Commonwealth officials, met on Sunday at 10am AEDT.
A spokesman for WA Premier Mark McGowan confirmed he had not been aware of the positive case at the time the AHPPC meeting started, which was at 7am WA time.
The AHPPC held the special meeting to discuss the coronavirus situation in New Zealand, but sources said it would have been an “appropriate” time to raise the possibility of a case of community transmission in WA.
Instead the federal government and health officials were only made aware of the positive COVID-19 case shortly before it was announced publicly on Sunday afternoon.
Asked when the AHPPC was first informed about the case, Mr McGowan told reporters “I don’t think it has yet”.
“The first meeting, they will be advised of the situation,” Mr McGowan said.
However the AHPPC was informed of the decision by late Sunday, as the expert group held an emergency meeting at 7pm to discuss the case.
The group also met again on Monday morning, but has not yet released a statement regarding the WA situation.
BARILARO HITS WA OVER LOCKDOWN
NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro has questioned whether the WA government has the “skill set” to manage a community outbreak of COVID-19, while declaring that a case discovered in a hotel quarantine security guard proves WA’s hard border has been “pointless”.
In his most strident criticism to date of WA Premier Mark McGowan, Mr Barilaro suggested a snap five day lockdown “may be an indication that (Mr McGowan) has no confidence in their contact tracing and their health system”.
“Do they have the skill sets to manage (an outbreak)? I don’t know. Hopefully they’ve resourced up their health people to do so, but time will tell,” Mr Barilaro told The Daily Telegraph.
Mr Barilaro and Mr McGowan have previously traded barbs over each state’s handling of the pandemic.
“Today he’s got a bit of egg on his face, because he has this issue,” Mr Barilaro said of the WA Premier.
“Having the lockdown, having the case - and quite a severe case - in the community, shows clearly that all the border pain that he put in place was pointless.”
“What I hope at the end of the five days is that he opens the border, realises that the threat isn’t domestic travel and the domestic borders, but the threat in itself is (hotel) quarantine,” Mr Barilaro said.
WA RECORDS NO NEW VIRUS CASES
No new cases of coronavirus have been confirmed in WA after the state’s first case of community transmission in almost 10 months sparked a five-day lockdown.
The Perth, Peel and South West regions were plunged into lockdown from 6pm WST on Sunday after it emerged a man aged in his 20s contracted the virus while working as a hotel quarantine guard at Four Points by Sheraton in the CBD.
WA Premier Mark McGowan told reporters on Monday that no new cases had been confirmed overnight despite 3171 tests being conducted at public COVID clinics on Sunday afternoon and evening.
Mr McGowan said 66 close contacts of the man had been identified, all of whom have been tested or will be later on Monday.
“There has been extensive testing of the close contacts of the positive case and that will continue,” the Premier told reporters.
“Those contacts have tested negative.
“Of those, 11 high risk contacts have been moved into high hotel quarantine as extra precaution.
“As the contact tracing team does further worker, the number of close contacts could also increase.
“These are encouraging signs but it is still early days.”
WA GUARD’S ‘ALARMING’ NUMBER OF CLOSE CONTACTS
An alarming number of close contacts of Western Australia’s first locally acquired COVID-19 case in almost 10 months have been identified, fuelling fears the hotel quarantine security guard may have spread the deadly virus widely.
The Perth, Peel and South West regions were plunged into a five-day lockdown from 6pm WST on Sunday after the state government was told the young man contracted the virus while working at Four Points by Sheraton in the CBD and then visited more than a dozen locations around the city.
It is suspected the guard, aged in his 20s, caught the highly contagious UK variant as he had worked on the same floor as a case of that strain.
It is believed that happened on Tuesday or Wednesday before he developed symptoms on Thursday.
The man visited 16 locations between Monday last week and Saturday – many in Maylands where he resides and including the Nedlands GP clinic that he went to on Friday.
BEREJIKLIAN REFUSES TO CLOSE BORDER TO WA
New South Wales will keep its borders open to Western Australia despite Perth entering a mass lockdown over its first local COVID case in 10 months.
Premier Gladys Berejiklian on Monday maintained her stance on borders and confirmed she would not follow Victoria, Queensland and South Australia in closing state lines to WA.
“New South Wales has a standing policy of keeping borders open and that’s what we’re going to do,” Ms Berejiklian said.
“It is a manageable situation at this stage and there is no reason why we will be altering our border situation.”
People who have come from the locked-down regions of Perth must get a test and isolate for five days.
While the border remains open, NSW Health said: “people subject to the stay at home orders in Perth should not be travelling to NSW”.
It comes as NSW recorded its 15th straight day without a locally acquired case of the virus.
The Premier was not drawn into criticising her WA counterpart Mark McGowan.
“Every state leader does what they think is best for their citizens within the national framework and certainly the strategy of NSW has been different to what other states have done its four other states to determine how they react to the pandemic,” she said.
“What is really important is for us to follow the national framework of zero community transmission. That is what all of us aspire to.
“We don’t want to see the disease spread in the community but we have to accept that while we are welcoming Australians back home, there is going to be this element of risk and it can happen anywhere in the state.”
STATES SLAM BORDERS SHUT TO WA
States were quick to slam their borders shut to sandgropers after WA announced the new local case.
Victoria closed its borders to parts of Western Australia including Perth, the Peel and South West regions which were upgraded from green to red status under the state’s traffic light system.
Anyone who visited a red zone from January 25 is not allowed to enter Victoria without an exemption. Travellers who have entered since Australia Day now must isolate.
Queensland has once again slammed their border shut.
The state’s Chief Health Officer Jeanette Young declared the affected WA areas a COVID hot spot.
Anyone from those areas travelling to Queensland will be required to complete 14 days of quarantine.
South Australia also erected a hard border to WA, shutting out the whole state.
People from all areas of the state, not just those affected, must quarantine and be tested if they wish to visit SA.
QUEENSLAND OPENS TO SYDNEY
It is third time lucky for those wanting to travel to Queensland with harsh border bans scrapped for Sydney early this morning.
It comes as the Queensland government begs with holiday-makers to visit tourism destinations which have been decimated by the coronavirus shutdown.
Last week, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk asked the Prime Minister to put together a national response for international travellers in a bid to help the ailing industry.
“I am publicly calling on the Prime Minister to take greater responsibility for international quarantine,” she said in a statement.
“A national quarantine plan would mean proper Commonwealth funding as well as adequate Defence Force and Border Force resourcing”.
She was blasted for these comments with most criticising her over Queensland’s hard border policy.
PERTH PLACED INTO LOCKDOWN OVER NEW CASE
Perth was plunged into lockdown by WA Premier Mark McGowan on Sunday evening after a hotel quarantine security guard tested positive for COVID-19.
The man, aged in his 20s, had been working at Sheraton Four Points in the Perth CBD where there were four active cases, including two UK and South African mutant strains of the virus.
The locked-down Perth areas include:
– Peel region: Boddington, Manudrah, Murray, Serpentine-Jarrahdale, Waroona
– Perth Metro region: Armadale, Bassendean, Bayswater, Belmont, Cambridge, Canning, Claremont, Cockburn, Cottesloe, East Fremantle, Fremantle, Gosnells, Joondalup, Kalamundra, Kwinana, Melville, Mosman Park, Mundaring, Nedlands, Peppermint Grove, Perth, Rockingham, South Perth, Stirling, Subiaco, Swan, Victoria Park, Vincent, Wanneroo
– South-west region: Augusta-Margaret River, Boyup Brook, Bridgetown-Greenbushes, Bunbury, Busselton, Capel, Collie, Dardanup, Donnybrook-Balingup, Harvey, Manjimu, Nannup.
Travellers who attended any Perth venues listed by the WA government as places of concern must get tested for COVID-19 and isolate for 14 days.
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