Premier Gutwein has warned that relaxing restrictions could lead to secondary outbreaks

While the rate of virus transmission has slowed, Tasmania will not relax lockdown restrictions early, Premier Gutwein has warned.

TASMANIA’S state of emergency “will not be over quickly”, Premier Peter Gutwein has warned, saying relaxing restrictions too early during the pandemic could lead to secondary outbreaks.

The Premier said while the spread of COVID-19 had slowed — including no new cases in the North and South in recent weeks — the state was “not out of the woods yet”.

In contrast to the other regions though, an outbreak in the North-West continues to produce new cases, with four more confirmed on Sunday and another two yesterday.

Two-thirds of Tasmania’s total cases are from that region, in a cluster which saw the closure of two major Burnie hospitals and forced thousands of people into lockdown.

Tough restrictions in the North-West, which have seen many retailers forced to shut, are due to be reviewed at the end of this week. But Mr Gutwein said those measures, and others imposed more broadly across the state, would not be lifted prematurely.

“I don’t intend to make a knee-jerk reaction and take us to a position where the restrictions come off too quickly, that then leaves us exposed and in a situation where we have to put restrictions in again,’’ he said.

“You only have to look at Singapore, for example, which five to six weeks ago was held up as being the doyen of responses across the world, and now they have a further second outbreak.”

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The Premier said an easing of the measures would not be considered until the outbreak in the North-West was under control, with a testing blitz in the region continuing.

He said lifting restrictions would be “a slow and gradual process” and that the state needed to be cautious due to an older and more vulnerable population.

Labor leader Rebecca White said she supported the Premier’s stance to retain restrictions, saying it was necessary to show caution, especially while an outbreak was current.

Mr Gutwein again encouraged Tasmanians to use the Federal Government’s COVIDSafe App to improve tracing capacity. He said the aim was for 40 per cent of the population to downlooad the app, equivalent to more than 200,000 Tasmanians.

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