SYDNEY – The Australian city of Perth will begin a snap five-day lockdown after a security guard at a quarantine hotel tested positive for Covid-19, authorities announced today.
Roughly two million residents must stay at home as of this evening, as will those living in the nearby Peel and South West regions.
The scheduled return to school tomorrow will be delayed, with locals permitted to leave their homes only for exercise, medical care, essential work, or to buy food.
The new rules follow the first case of community transmission in Western Australia state in 10 months, said officials.
“Our model is to deal with it very, very quickly and harshly… so that we can bring it under control and not have community spread of the virus, as you have seen in other countries around the world,” said state Prime Minister Mark McGowan.
Authorities believe the man contracted the virus from a returning traveller quarantining at a hotel in Australia’s fourth-biggest city.
The traveller is thought to have picked up the British variant of the virus, believed to be more infectious than Covid-19 strains previously detected in Australia.
Genomic testing is under way to determine the precise source of the man’s infection, and health officials said he may have visited more than a dozen locations while infected.
Cafes, bars and restaurants have been ordered to close, while visits to health facilities are banned and weddings, cancelled.
“What we’re trying to do is have a (short) period of disruption rather than a long period of disruption, and therefore, some adverse health outcomes,” said McGowan.
“We are trying to crush the virus as quickly as we possibly can.”
The restrictions are the toughest seen in Perth since the early stages of the pandemic, while masks have been made mandatory for the first time.
Western Australia kept its borders closed for most of 2020, cutting itself off from the rest of the nation, but allowing the state to enjoy many months of relative normalcy.
The snap lockdown comes three weeks after similar measures were implemented in the eastern city of Brisbane, prompted by a hotel cleaner contracting the virus.
Those restrictions were quickly lifted when it became clear that the disease had not taken hold in the community.
Australia has fared relatively well during the pandemic, recording just over 28,800 Covid-19 cases and 909 deaths in a population of about 25 million. – AFP, January 31, 2021
