WA will significantly ease its interim lockdown restrictions and mask wearing requirements from midnight tomorrow, after the state recorded no new cases of COVID-19 for the fourth consecutive day.
Western Australia will significantly ease its interim lockdown restrictions and mask wearing requirements from midnight tomorrow, after the state recorded no new cases of COVID-19 for the fourth consecutive day.
During a press conference this afternoon, Premier Mark McGowan announced that the state government would significantly ease the restrictions that have been in place for the past fortnight after two separate cases of COVID-19 linked to the state’s hotel quarantine system led to the first cases of community spread in WA in more than a year.
From 12.01am Saturday, May 8, masks will only be required on public transport, at events and venues with more than 1000 people, hospitals, and aged care facilities.
People will be able to have gatherings of up to 100 people at their homes and nightclubs and casinos will be allowed to reopen, subject to the two square metre rule.
Major stadiums will be able to reopen to spectators, but will be limited to 75 per cent capacity with mandatory mask wearing for spectators.
Those restrictions will be in place until 12.01am Saturday, May 15.
The state government has said it will continue to closely monitor the evolving situation in New South Wales after a man tested positive for the virus yesterday, but that there would be no change in the border arrangement for now.
Mr McGowan confirmed that no new arrivals in Western Australia have been linked to the state’s exposure sites.
The decisions are based on the advice of the state's chief health officer, which was delivered during a meeting of the emergency management committee this morning.
The Perth and Peel regions were placed in a three-day lockdown on April 23 after a Melbourne man contracted the virus in his final days of hotel quarantine before unknowingly infecting two other people in the community.
Fifteen hours after the interim lockdown restrictions were lifted for the regions, the state reinstated mask wearing requirements after it was revealed that a Pan Pacific Hotel security guard tested positive for the virus on April 29, but had been in the community since becoming infectious on April 27.
Genome sequencing confirmed the guard has the US variant of the virus, the same variant as two returned travellers transferred to the hotel while he was working on April 24.
He was wearing PPE, but is believed to have contracted the virus after handling the traveller’s luggage.
Two of his seven housemates also tested positive for the virus.
The pair were food delivery drivers who had picked up food from 76 different locations throughout Perth's northern suburbs while unknowingly infectious, prompting a mammoth contact tracing operation by the state's health authorities.
But with the interim restrictions and mandatory mask wearing implemented when the trio were infectious in the community, the interactions were deemed to have been "very low risk".
Today, Mr McGowan confirmed that all 115 close contacts of the guard had returned negative test results, with no evidence of spread beyond his two household contacts.
A Collie man tested positive for the virus on Tuesday, but health authorities said the weak positive was likely to be a historical infection.
