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Western Australia has recorded a second community case of the virus linked to one of the exposure sites identified by state health authorities.
The person went to get tested for COVID-19 yesterday after realising they had been in one of the locations visited by a Victorian man and his friend while they were infectious.
Health authorities are working with the new confirmed case to determine any possible close contacts and update the list of potential exposure sites.
This is our last post for the evening, thank you for joining our live coverage.
We’ll be back tomorrow to bring you the latest on the lockdown for Perth and the Peel region, sparked after the coronavirus managed to escape hotel quarantine.
A second member of the public has tested positive for coronavirus after dining at a popular restaurant in Kardinya at the same time as two other COVID-positive people on April 18.
Central to the government’s concerns are locations visited by a Perth woman and a Victorian man who contracted the virus while completing his mandatory quarantine at the Mercure Hotel.
He has since travelled to Melbourne, where he went into isolation and subsequently tested positive for the virus, but there are concerns he was active in the community for five days from April 17.
The second case of community transmission detected in WA dined at the same restaurant in Kardinya as two other confirmed cases linked to the Mercure Hotel cluster.
The man, aged in his 40s, ate at popular Malaysian eatery Kitchen Inn on South Street on April 18.
Authorities said the man got tested for the virus at one of the state’s COVID clinics on Friday after realising they had been at one of the locations released by the Department of Health.
In light of the latest positive case, the state government has tightened quarantine rules for anyone who dined at any of the five restaurants attended by the confirmed cases.
Western Australia has recorded a second community case of the virus linked to one of the exposure sites identified by state health authorities.
The person went to get tested for COVID-19 yesterday after realising they had been in one of the locations visited by a Victorian man and his friend while they were infectious.
Health authorities are working with the new confirmed case to determine any possible close contacts and update the list of potential exposure sites.
The variant of COVID-19 detected in India is no terrifying “double mutant”, scientists say, but it is a sign of how outbreaks anywhere in the world continue to pose a serious threat to Australia.
India is in the middle of a pandemic surge and recorded the world’s highest daily total of COVID-19 infections, 332,730, on Friday, beating a record the country set the day before. Nations around the world have banned flights, while New Delhi has turned to mass cremations in car parks to deal with the city’s mounting dead.
Amid the unfolding disaster, attention has focused on a variant first spotted in India in October known as B.1.617, which some newspapers have labelled a ‘double mutant’, as it possesses at least two important changes in its genetic code.
British health authorities have tracked a sharp increase in cases of B.1.617 detected there since late March. Cases have been reported in 14 other countries, including at least eight cases in Australia.
Anyone in Western Australia who has been in the Perth or Peel region since April 17 should be following the same restrictions as people in the city whether they be in the South West or Broome.
A miscommunication error from a scrambling state government has led to mass confusion as to who exactly the three-day lockdown rules apply to.
West Australians heading to the South West en masse for the Anzac Day weekend were told on Friday they could still leave as stay-at home directions would only come into play at 12.01am on Saturday.
Health Minister Roger Cook had to clarify this at an afternoon press conference, however, that those people would still have to wear a mask and could only leave their accommodation for one hour of exercise or other approved reasons.
The president of the peak body representing medical practitioners in Western Australia has urged the Commonwealth to take hotel quarantine off the hands of the McGowan government.
Andrew Miller said the Australian Medical Association had sounded the alarm over the inadequacy of the state’s hotel since the beginning of the pandemic but had been ignored.
“It’s clear that the mitigations that are missing are all to do with airborne spread,” Dr Miller said.
“They should have been introduced before case 903 ever happened because this advice had been given to the government repeatedly by diverse experts.”
Authorities have added two additional exposure sites to the list of locations visited by the two confirmed COVID-19 cases linked to the Mercure Hotel cluster.
The new sites include a bakery in Willetton and a petrol station in Kardinya.
Anyone who has visited the sites should get tested for the virus and isolate until they have returned a negative COVID test.
Check the most up-to-date list here:
Marta Pascual Juanola will take over the blog as WA’s AMA president Dr Andrew Miller readies to give an update.
Premier Mark McGowan said quarantining returning Australians was the responsibility of the Commonwealth, calling on the Prime Minister to open local facilities.
He said there were a number of Commonwealth facilities in Western Australia more suitable for quarantining than hotels.
“I’ve been calling for Commonwealth assistance with quarantine for many, many months now,” he said.
As the WA Premier grapples with a second lockdown due to the hotel quarantine system failing, he said it was “time for the Commonwealth to step up and help”.
He said the WA government was ready to work with the federal government to help establish Commonwealth facilities.
“It’s the only way to reduce the risk further,” Mr McGowan said.
A man believed to be the patient zero of the Mercure Hotel cluster had recently returned to Perth from attending a wedding in India.
India is in the midst of a massive wave of coronavirus cases that has been clogging local hospitals and overwhelming local authorities. This week, the country set a new world record for daily infections after recording 314,000 new cases in a day.
There are about 34,000 Australians overseas registered as wanting to return, the largest cohort of whom, about 9000, are in India.
The man was in quarantine on a floor of the Mercure Hotel with 24 other overseas travellers when the virus spread across several rooms. A woman, her four-year-old child and a Victorian man who had recently returned from China were all infected.
The Victorian man, who has since returned to Melbourne, spent five days in Perth as a ‘tourist’ visiting several sites and transmitted the virus to a Kardinya receptionist who had hosted him at her home.