South Australia will allow arrivals from Greater Melbourne to enter the state from 12:01am on Friday without any need to isolate or seek coronavirus testing.
Key points:
- People from Greater Melbourne will be allowed back into SA from Friday
- Dancing and drinking will also be permitted in some venues
- SA has added another coronavirus case to its tally
A ban on travel was introduced in response to Melbourne’s Holiday Inn outbreak, and was extended to cover the whole of Victoria — but the hard border was repealed for regional Victorians last week.
Dancing and drinking will also now be permitted in venues that cater to less than 200 people.
In venues with 200 to 1000 people, it will be permitted on a designated dancefloor — to a capacity of 50 patrons.
Venues above 1,000 people will still be subject to a dedicated COVID management plan.
The decisions were made at a meeting of South Australia’s coronavirus transition committee this morning.
SA Premier Steven Marshall said the removal of remaining restrictions with Victoria would be a “huge relief”.
“People coming from Greater Melbourne will be able to come in — we’re removing that restriction — but more than that, they will not have testing requirements on day one, day five and day 12,” he said.
“This is going to be a huge relief.
“Victoria has got on top of their outbreak.”
SA has also recorded another coronavirus case — an old infection in an international traveller whose case was not counted overseas.
Chief Public Health Officer Nicola Spurrier said because the person was “not actively infectious”, they would not be transferred to the Tom’s Court dedicated medi-hotel for positive cases.
“We do have people in South Australia who are in quarantine because they’ve come from Greater Melbourne,” Professor Spurrier said.
“The majority of those people will be able to come out of quarantine. However, those people who were at specific exposure sites … listed on the Victorian [Government’s] website, they do need to have their full 14 days of quarantine.
“That other group who are able to come out of quarantine — we will still require you to have your day one, five and 12 testing done.”
SA Police Commissioner Grant Stevens said that group of people would be able to leave quarantine from just after midnight on Friday, in line with the broader relaxation.
He said police would also begin winding back their presence along the state’s Victorian border, and that interstate arrivals would still need to fill out applications.
“We will be removing all border restrictions and the checkpoints we have in place across the south-eastern part of South Australia … ,” he said.
“No matter where you’re coming from into South Australia, you must go online and do the cross-border application. When we get to a situation like this where we have no restrictions, it is automatically approved.”
Professor Spurrier said a total of 4,842 COVID-19 tests were conducted yesterday, and that the latest case took the state’s total to 613 since the pandemic began.
SA Health also confirmed that another one of the state’s four active cases had the UK COVID-19 strain and they acquired it overseas.
That person is currently in the Tom’s Court medi-hotel.