South Australia has recorded three new cases of COVID-19, including two linked to the current Modbury cluster.
Key points:
- One of the new cases is linked to The Greek on Halifax, another to Tenafeate Creek Wines
- The other is not linked to a cluster, but is a child who recently returned from overseas
- SA is still on track to emerge from lockdown, but the Premier said Monday would be “D-Day”
Premier Steven Marshall said all three cases had been in “strict” quarantine, and said tomorrow would be “D-Day” in terms of determining whether the state was on track to emerge from lockdown.
Chief Public Health Officer Nicola Spurrier said one of the new cases was a child, while the other two had attended either The Greek on Halifax restaurant or Tenafeate Creek Wines — both exposure sites linked to the cluster that sent the state into lockdown.
“One of those cases is a returned traveller. In fact, it’s a young child – the parent was already positive and so the parent and the child were already in our Tom’s Court facility,” Professor Spurrier said.
“There are two cases associated with the Modbury cluster. There’s now 18 in total and 10 linked to the winery.”
Professor Spurrier said one of the new cases in the cluster, which traces back to an elderly man who attended the Modbury Hospital on Sunday night, had caught the virus from her child.
“One of those two cases is a woman in her 40s. You may recall we had a two-year-old, or a child less than five who was positive,” she said.
“The other person is a man in his 70s and he was attending the Tenafeate winery.
“He was quarantining at home, he lives alone … and he’s now being transferred to Tom’s Court. Both of the new cases are stable.”
The state is still on track to lift the lockdown order on Tuesday night, but authorities have warned that tough social distancing measures are likely to remain in place.
A new state record of 23,719 coronavirus tests were completed on Saturday, despite some testing stations closing due to wild weather.
“The three new cases today are not as worrying as three new cases out in the community. That would be a very different situation,” Mr Marshall said.
“Because of their diligence and their compliance, we are still on track to lift the lockdown order on Tuesday night this week.
“By putting very heavy restrictions in place very quickly, we put ourselves in the best position to have a very quick, very sharp lockdown.”
The state’s Transition Committee is scheduled to meet on Sunday afternoon and again on Monday to further discuss the situation.
While the emphasis is on getting people back to work and school “as safely as possible”, authorities remain alert to the rising number of cases in New South Wales.
“We don’t want to lift those restrictions too quickly and then have a relapse. We are very concerned about the situation in New South Wales,” Mr Marshall said.
“I can’t see us going back to three [people] per four square metres [in hospitality] in the short term … I think that is some way off.”
Barrel room a ‘highly infectious place’
Professor Spurrier said SA Health was currently reviewing quarantine requirements in light of the latest case from Tenafeate Creek.
She said about 40 people already in home quarantine were being sent to medi-hotels after the risk assessment changed.
“The team have done a lot of forensic work now going back and looking at CCTV footage,” she said.
“They are ascertaining … whether we should be having other people transferred into a medi-hotel.
“On the basis of that, we’ve made contact with approximately 40 people who have been doing home quarantine … [and] those people will be transferred to our medi-hotels as well.”
Professor Spurrier said she was not aware of any new exposure sites, but that people should continue to check the list for updates.
“Once we do a contract-tracing interview … as the team gets more information, the exposure times or the tier of that exposure site may change,” she said.
“That’s updated on our website, so I do encourage all South Australians to keep looking at that.”
Professor Spurrier said as contact tracers collected new information for the exposure sites list, some people in quarantine had been allowed out, including those from the Westminster School site.
“Because people QR [coded] in, we were able to really quickly SMS anybody that had been on the school grounds,” she said.
Her team could then verify — through “CCTV footage and the like” — who the case had been in contact with.
“I know that there was a school uniform shop open because it was a student-free day on the Monday,” she said.
“So there were some parents and students who had come to the uniform shop, but that was not where the case was — so some of those people have been able to come out of quarantine on the basis of that.”
However, Professor Spurrier said shopping centres — of which there are several on SA’s exposure sites list — were “more difficult”, as it was harder to track where everyone was at the time.
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