Coronavirus: No one comes in as Western Australia shuts borders

Western Australia will be the first state to introduce hard borders, promising to turn back even its own residents at checkpoints.

A truck stops at the border between Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

Western Australia will be the first state to introduce hard borders, promising to turn back even its own residents at checkpoints and airports if they try to come home and do not meet strict criteria.

From midnight on Sunday, only essential workers will be ­allowed to travel to the state from elsewhere in Australia unless they apply for and are granted an exemption on compassionate grounds. People who fly into Perth from interstate will be put back on planes if they do not meet criteria.

“If you had asked me a couple of months ago would we be closing the West Australian border, I would have laughed, but unfortunately this is no laughing matter … we have no choice but to act in the best interests of every West Australian,” Premier Mark McGowan said. “In effect we will be turning Western Australia into an island within an island, our own country.”

A day after the West Australian government banned travel between each of the state’s nine ­regions, Mr McGowan said he would effectively ban travel ­between most towns within the ­remote far north Kimberley, where half of all residents are indigenous.

The lockdown confines residents to one of four local gov­ernment areas and is a response to a spike of cases in the Kimberley that the Premier said was “of grave concern”.

Six health workers in the region tested positive to COVID-19 ­between Monday and Thursday, all of them in towns that serve as medical hubs for remote Aboriginal settlements.

Health Minister Roger Cook said contract tracing was under ay in all cases.

The first health worker to test positive was from Broome hospital but had had no face-to-face contact with patients.

However, several of the workers’ colleagues were identified as close contacts and self-isolated immediately. Three more Broome healthcare workers tested positive on Wednesday and Mr Cook said work was ongoing to ensure they had no contact with patients.

“We are confident that we have this situation under control,” he said.

Another healthcare worker in the Kimberley town of Kununurra was found to have coronavirus after returning from travel but was not considered a risk to patients because that worker had not ­returned to work at any point since travelling.

Premier of Western Australia Mark McGowan speaks to the media during a press conference in Perth.

The case of an infected doctor in the Kimberley town of Halls Creek had caused great alarm because the town attracts some of the region’s most vulnerable elders ­visiting for medical appointments.

“The contact tracing teams are on the ground and they are making good progress,” Mr Cook said.

The McGowan government has repeatedly stressed that Aboriginal West Australians are an ­especially vulnerable group because many have compromised immunity because of underlying health issues such as diabetes.

The government banned tourists from the Kimberley as a measure to protect about 17,000 indigenous people living there.

Western Australia’s new hard border measures cannot be ­enforced on Australian citizens who fly into Perth from overseas, Mr McGowan said. The state would have to take them, but they would be forced to quarantine for two weeks in a city hotel.