Coronavirus Australia: South Australia’s anxiety, disbelief and a jolt of reality as virus spikes

Cleaners at Mawson Lakes Primary School in Adelaide’s north on Monday after it was linked to the latest outbreak. Picture: Tait Schmaal

The mood in South Australia is one of anxiety and disbelief.

The anxiety is justified, the disbelief less so.

The scale and nature of SA’s coronavirus outbreak means people are right to be anxious about the risk of widening infections and the grim probability of deaths in a state that had previously registered just four.

On a less grave but still distressing level, families who just days ago had joyfully telephoned their kids and grandkids interstate to discuss a pending Christmas reunion are now cancelling those plans.

Businesses that were finally getting a taste of real freedom — with the SA COVID-19 Transition Committee announcing only last Friday the latest easing of what were already modest restrictions — are now facing the prospect of reduced patron numbers, if not crippling, outright closures.

The anxiety is valid. The disbelief is not.

What is happening in South Australia right now is a harsh reminder that this is what life will look like until such a time as we get a workable and universally available vaccine. If a state that had enjoyed such success in managing and suppressing the virus can cop an outbreak like this, a similar outbreak can happen anywhere.

Indeed it is SA’s great record in fighting COVID-19 that makes this news so hard to process. The state’s response has been widely lauded, from the high rate of testing to the professionalism of quarantine, the reliance on SA Police and the ADF to manage hotels, and a vigilant and swift contact tracing regimen.

Now, that regimen will be tested like never before, with the family at the centre of this cluster having embarked on a very public tour of some of the most crowded locations in Adelaide’s northern suburbs, in what is truly a testament to the human capacity for ambivalence when things seem to be chugging along nicely.

Unpleasant questions

In the public arena, two questions are being asked with force. The first reflects the myopia that has characterised the COVID-19 response — something which, admirably, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian was the only state leader to avoid yesterday.

Many South Australians are now demanding an immediate stop to overseas repatriations. The demand is based on a flawed belief that “foreigners” are somehow being brought into SA, when the reality is that, with the exception of travellers from New Zealand, every person who has returned from overseas is an Australian citizen who has been required to perform two weeks of self-funded quarantine.

The second question, and it may be a tougher one for the Government and SA Health, goes to the fact that while the safeguards around quarantine might have been tough, in hindsight they might not have been tough enough.

People want to know why the staff working in quarantine have not been tested more frequently, as the problem SA now faces originates entirely from an infected medi-hotel worker who also infected their mother, their partner, unleashing the surge in connected cases.

These are all unpleasant questions. They’re unexpected ones, too, in a place where while other states were still ramping up the closures back in May, the SA Transition Committee was meeting to discuss the happy topic of reopening cellar doors.

A place that had largely cruised its way through COVID-19, and which was getting ready to enjoy the silly season, just got a nasty jolt of reality in what remains a vaccine-free world.