NSW tracking WA arrivals but border will stay open: Premier
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said she will not shut the border with Western Australia after it entered a five-day lockdown over the emergence of its first case of community transmission in 10 months.
Ms Berejiklian said health authorities were acting “quickly and swiftly” to screen all people who had arrived in NSW from WA since January 25, but maintained the need for a proportionate response.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian alongside school captains at the recently opened Peakhurst Public School on Monday.Credit:Kate Geraghty
“NSW has a standing policy of keeping our borders open, and that’s what we’ll continue to do.“
Perth woke to its first day of full lockdown on Monday, after a security guard at a Perth quarantine hotel tested positive for what is believed to be the highly infectious UK strain of the coronavirus.
WA Premier Mark McGowan announced the stay-at-home order on Sunday, closing schools and asking people to work from home until Friday at 6pm.
Ms Berejiklian said authorities were still only aware of the single case in WA and were acting accordingly.
“Please judge NSW on our record of how we manage things here. It’s not for me to suggest what other premiers should do. I leave that up to them,” she said.
“I think all of us have to be considerate. It’s difficult when communities have to go through lockdown and our thoughts are with everyone in WA at the moment.”
NSW recorded its 15th day of zero community transmission on Monday, while six cases were confirmed in returned travellers in hotel quarantine.
The Premier said the significant number of cases still being recorded in returning travellers was a reflection of the increasing virulence of the virus overseas.
She said it was a reminder for people to assume that mutant strains of COVID-19 will become the dominant strains.
“We’re seeing the rate of infection in Europe and North America increase quite substantially. We know it’s because of the more virulent strains of the virus and the best health advice tells me that they will, in due course, become the main strain of the virus,” she said.
“This is the future we’re facing, which is why at the moment we have a pause in the number of Australians we’re [accepting] back through Sydney Airport.”
NSW is accepting 1500 returning travellers a week at least until February 15, half the amount it had been taking last year.
The state marked one complete incubation cycle with no new locally acquired cases on Sunday, raising hopes that both the Avalon and the Berala clusters have been squashed.
More to come
Lucy Cormack is a state political reporter with The Sydney Morning Herald.