Adelaide’s growing COVID-19 cluster has the state government and health authorities very concerned, with the new strain of COVID-19 being labelled as ‘sneaky’ with a short incubation period of around 24-hours, and a rapid breeding rate.
The cluster originated with a back of house worker at Peppers Waymouth medi-hotel in Adelaide’s CBD, and has been traced to a ‘surface contact’ transmission, rather than a person-to-person contact.
From midnight last night, a 6-day lockdown is in place with all schools, pubs, and eateries closed and exercise outside the home banned. All sport is cancelled and weddings and funerals are banned. Aged cared and disability residential homes will be subjected to the lockdown. Supermarkets will be open for essential shopping only, and one person per household will be able to leave the home each day, but only for essential and specific purposes. Fly-In fly-out work will be suspended for the 6-days, as will all regional travel within the state and holiday home rentals.
SA Premier Steven Marshall has called the 6-day lockdown a ‘necessary circuit breaker’ to enable further urgent contact tracing.
“We continue to face our biggest test to date,” the Premier said.
“We are going hard and we are going early. Time is of the essence.”
South Australia’s Chief Public Health Officer Professor, Nicola Spurrier, said of the immediate lockdown, “We don’t have any time to wait. If I just thought about this all day and then told the Police Commissioner and the Premier tonight, we would already be that 12 hours behind.”
IMAGE: Peppers Waymouth Adelaide
