It’s the second coronavirus scare in less than a week, after a hotel quarantine worker tested positive for the disease on Thursday, likely contracted from an overseas source. Testing of the woman’s close contacts has so far failed to uncover any other positive cases.
Loading
Premier Mark McGowan on Sunday said while the news of the tow travellers’ quarantine breach at Sydney airport were “concerning”, he would remain firm on making a decision on the state of the WA border on Monday after reviewing all testing results from New South Wales.
“It is certainly not the gold standard,” he said.
“This is obviously concerning. But fortunately both of them were not positive [for COVID-19], both of them have been tested, but it obviously shows that COVID is a risk and that’s why we continue to have a controlled border in place to ensure we can protect people to go into the future.
He said it was positive news that there was no community transmission of the virus despite the recent scares.
“The latest advice is that yesterday there were no new cases picked up in the community in New South Wales, they did 12,000 or so tests, but we will see what other testing is done today before we make a final decision tomorrow,” Mr McGowan said.
“I suppose, along the pathway of the last 10 months, 11 months, along the COVID pathway, there has been lots and lots and lots off issues and mistakes made.
“The good thing is, we have always taken a very precautionary and very cautious approach. But New South Wales currently has no community spread of the virus, but because we have the controlled border in place, if we need to, we can put the hard border back in place in a heartbeat.”
As West Australians eagerly await a decision on quarantine-free travel, the SafeWA app, helping the state with mandatory contract tracing which came into effect yesterday, failed for 15 minutes on Saturday night.
Mr McGowan said with close to 630,000 downloads of the app so far it was “a small glitch in the system”.
On Sunday there were two new cases of coronavirus recorded in WA, both are returned travellers, taking the state’s total to 830, with 13 active cases.
