Tasmania Police checking in on 5,000 people in isolation

Thousands of people are stuck at home around Tasmanian and the police are making sure they don’t go out.

AROUND 5,000 Tasmanians are in mandatory self-isolation after returning from interstate or overseas due to the coronavirus threat.

And police are investigating 200 reports of people disobeying self-isolation directions.

Director of Public Health Mark Veitch said police have started spot checks to make sure people were obeying with the rules.

He said health officials, police and biosecurity officers were monitoring a large number of potential cases.

“We have 304 people are being actively monitored by the Health Department, including 268 people who are off a number of cruise ships and 86 people who are household contacts cases,” he said.

“Our colleagues in biosecurity and the place have nearly 5,000 people on the books, who have been either come either to Tasmania from overseas over the last 10 days or from mainland Australia since last Friday night and they’re conducting compliance checks on a sample of those people.”

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So far 400 people have had visits from police to check they are following the rules.

Premier Peter Gutwein said reports of people ignoring directions to stay home are being investigated.

“We have 47 cases, more than half of those … have been linked to cruise ship passengers,” he said.

“We’ve identified, we tracked and traced all of those cruise ship passengers that are in the state, and we are ensuring that they are being held in terms of the quarantine process and self-far isolation.

“My understanding is in terms of TasPolice, there’s been around two hundred reports in terms of non-compliance.

“Every single one of them is being followed up. Every single one.”

Fines of more than $8,000 and up to six months in prison apply to people failing to obey orders to self-isolate.

Faced with an unemployment rate that has doubled or tripled, a nosedive in economic growth and a budget blowout in the hundreds of millions of dollars, Mr Gutwein yesterday said there was the possibility of another state government economic stimulus package.

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“We are going to ensure that we can provide the support to Tasmanians that they need to help them get through this. I’ll make no apologies for that. If there is a need for another package, then when we use out strong balance sheet again and we will ensure we can support Tasmanians in this hour of need,

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Mr Gutwein urged Tasmanians to stay home this weekend and beyond.

“There are those that aren’t paying attention to what is going on,” he said.

“I will be very, very clear about this, this is a serious matter. Lives are at risk.

“If you don’t need to go out, if you don’t need to go to work, if you don’t need to go to the shops to buy supplies, stay at home and save lives.”

The Premier has raised the possibility of more severe lockdowns unless people stay at home.