Join our daily newsletter At The Bell to receive exclusive market insights
- A new coronavirus case in South Australia was found overnight, with the slowly-growing cluster bringing restrictions and panic buying back into the state
- The cluster of cases has now grown to 20 — with 17 infections all within the same family
- Still, South Australian authorities are not taking any chances; fresh restrictions on gyms, recreation cents, pubs, and other gatherings were introduced overnight
- Moreover, all international flights with Australians returning to South Australia from overseas have been suspended
- Toilet paper shelves are being stripped bare once more in supermarkets — Coles has introduced a two-packs-per-person limit while Woolworths has tripled toilet paper supply
- As it stands, the origin of the new infections is still unknown, but it’s suspected to have come from a hard surface in a hotel being used for quarantine
A new coronavirus case in South Australia was found overnight, with the slowly-growing cluster bringing restrictions and panic buying back into the state.
South Australian authorities are scrambling to bring the cluster under control, with 20 locally-spread infections now recorded in the state. Somewhat encouragingly, 17 of these are from the same family.
Still, after the surge of cases in Victoria, South Australia is not taking any chances: overnight, fresh emergency restriction measures were put in place. These include shutting down gyms and recreation centres, capping the number of guests allowed at funerals, church services, wedding, pubs, and restaurants, and suspending all international flights with Australians returning to Adelaide.
On top of this, South Australian Premier Steven Marshall said “hundreds and hundreds” of people have been placed into isolation, and the hotel quarantine of all visitors to the state and South Australians returning from interstate or overseas travel has been extended.
Moreover, thousands of people have been tested.
Still, it seems South Australians are already preparing for the worst — toilet paper shelves are taking a beating once more in a repeat of the early-2020 coronavirus panic.
It’s gotten to the point where Coles has introduced a two-packs-per-person limit across its stores in South Australia. Woolworths hasn’t introduced a purchase limit, but said it is sending triple the volume of stock to stores to keep up with demand.
Queensland, Western Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, and the Northern Territory have declared South Australia a hotspot and have shut their borders to the state.
Hotel quarantine failure or unlucky accident?
An elderly Adeliade woman was the first known case of the latest cluster, but an investigation into how exactly she contracted the virus is still ongoing.
Early indications suggest the virus spread from a hotel being used for quarantine purposes.
As this stage, it seems a cleaner contracted the virus from a hard surface in the hotel and not from another person. The cleaner then passed the virus on to security guards, and the infection started to spread from there.
As such, Premier Marshall said the outbreak cannot be classified as a hotel quarantine breach.
Nevertheless, he said the next 48 hours are “crucial” as more tests come in and the state begins to understand the gravity of the new outbreak.
The premier said health authorities are hopeful they caught the virus in time, but are still anxious about what sort of results might come in over the next two days.
