Mark McGowan kicks a goal with no lockdown
Mark McGowan has resisted the urge to again confine two million West Australians to their homes.
Mark McGowan has resisted the urge to again confine two million West Australians to their homes following the latest COVID leak from hotel quarantine.
The Premier on Sunday said there would not be another lockdown at this stage, after the second quarantine-linked outbreak in the state in as many weeks — with one hotel worker and two housemates infected — but he did ban spectators at the AFL derby between Fremantle and West Coast.
While his decision not to call another lockdown won praise from the business community, the Premier bristled at suggestions Western Australia was moving towards a NSW-style model that prioritises contact-tracing and health precautions over snap lockdowns. He said the state would have “definitely” entered another lockdown had it not been for the residual safety precautions still in place after WA’s Anzac Day weekend lockdown.
“Last week, we were already in the state of semi-lockdown. People wearing masks, we had rules … and various venues closed, and then coincidentally this case emerged while all those rules were in place,” he said. “Had these three cases emerged two or three weeks ago, well then we would have gone into lockdown.”
He said the softer approach to the latest outbreak said more about the nature of the situation than any shift in policy. “You have to judge everything in the circumstances you confront,” he said.
“There are no hard and fast rules and every state has, I think, adopted a pretty precautionary approach by world standards.”
The Anzac lockdown was estimated by the WA Treasury to have cost the state $70m, although WA’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry estimated it would cost at least $170m after surveying its members.
AI Group chief executive Innes Willox said it was encouraging to see the government deciding against a lockdown for now. “Long may that continue,” he said. “As the Premier has conceded, lockdowns do enormous harm to industry and economy. Localised approaches can work in dealing with COVID cases. The government needs to have confidence in its own systems.”
Some 153 contacts linked to the latest outbreak have been identified. Sixteen of those contacts identified as being of high risk have been confirmed to be negative. The outbreak centred on a guard at the Pan Pacific hotel. Two of the man’s seven housemates have also tested positive to COVID.
Both those people had also had shifts as food delivery drivers while potentially infectious, although Mr McGowan said they were considered to be of low risk to the public. One of the cases had also attended a cooking school at the Perth College of Business and Technology.
The latest outbreak has again turned up the scrutiny of WA’s hotel quarantine system, given there have now been three breaches since January.
Problems with the ventilation systems of three Perth hotels were identified in the wake of the first of those outbreaks, and WA has now halved its intake of arrivals.
Andrew Miller, the president of the WA branch of the Australian Medical Association, said it was disappointing to hear Mr McGowan describe the cause of the latest case as “inexplicable”.
“Very clearly this is happening through airborne spread to an unvaccinated guard who had inadequate PPE in an inadequate quarantine facility,” Mr Miller said.
“We need immediate change of the people running the system because they’ve been unreceptive to doing this quickly enough.”
He said the government should build portable accommodation at Perth Airport for COVID-positive cases.
Perth billionaire Andrew Forrest said the latest case confirmed the current quarantine system needed to change. Dr Forrest, whose Minderoo Foundation has been funding research into COVID and the policy response, instead proposed a seven-day period of quarantine followed by a week of isolation at home.
That would quickly isolate those returning travellers who were not carrying the virus, reduce the chances of them catching the virus from other travellers, and take pressure off the system.
“The aerosol spread of COVID-19 is consistently being downplayed and is one reason these hotel quarantine breaches continue to occur,” he said. “It is past time to deploy a science-driven, risk-based approach.”
The decision to lock crowds out of Optus Stadium is expected to cost the West Coast Eagles about $1m in lost revenue.
The order was also a blow to Tim McLernon, the owner of the Camfield bar opposite the stadium, which would normally have thousands of patrons on game day but was instead host to just a few hundred diehard fans.
Mr McLernon was philosophical. “Yes the Camfield and the stadium are the most impacted in the state, but it means there are still hundreds of other pubs around the state that can still open,” he said.
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