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Please join us again tomorrow for updates as they come to hand.
A cruise ship headed for Fremantle that Premier Mark McGowan said was carrying hundreds of passengers with "upper respiratory illnesses" has no one aboard with respiratory disease or any flu-like symptoms.
This is despite the Premier and Police Commissioner Chris Dawson fronting the media on Monday morning to reveal a "dynamic and critical emergency" as the 1700-passenger MSC Magnifica prepared to dock as early as Monday night.
The news sparked confusion inside WA's hospitals and a scramble to prepare for more than 250 possible COVID-19 cases which might require urgent medical attention.
More than two million Australians could be out of work with unemployment expected to soar as businesses begin shutting their doors and standing down or sacking workers.
Queues of laid-off workers snaked around Centrelink offices in scenes reminiscent of the Great Depression.
Under unprecedented sudden demand, the Centrelink website crashed and phone lines jammed.
Those in the line now face a month-long wait to receive $1100 a fortnight in unemployment benefits.
Staff at a Perth animal shelter say while there had been a slow increase in the number of pet surrenders in recent weeks, they expected the full impact of the economic recession to hit WA's feline population in a few months' time.
"After all these job losses people sadly won’t be financially able to care for their cats – so the next few months are when we expect to get increased surrenders," a Cat Haven spokeswoman said.
The animal rescue centre had experienced an influx of people willing to foster cats throughout the COVID-19 crisis, but the facility said it would need to start making room for the predicted population boom.
"Due to social distancing recommendations we are operating bookings to view cats for adoption via our Facebook page and have strict measures about how many people can be in the adoption area and reception area at one time, as well as processing adoptions outside away from others," the spokeswoman said.
"As long as people can commit to caring for a cat long-term and can afford food, vet treatment and health care costs, now is the perfect time to adopt, particularly if people are working from home – [it's] much easier to introduce a cat while you are home to provide reassurance."
The WA Health Department has denied suggestions from AMA WA that one of the state’s major hospitals was being shut down, and another was having an "internal emergency".
A Health Department staffer confirmed to WAtoday that Fiona Stanley Hospital was not on 'code brown' and would not be shut down.
The confirmation came after AMA WA president Andrew Miller told media on Monday that doctors told him FSH was shutting down, and Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital was in 'code yellow', which according to the WA Health Department referred to an internal emergency.
“The hospital is undertaking a recommissioning of transfer of patients out,” he said.
A West Australian couple are facing the prospect of more than six months away from their home town of Geraldton after finding themselves stranded indefinitely in Tamworth.
Bob Jennings, 73, and his wife Lee, 64, made the decision to abort their Queensland holiday and return home to WA last week when states began announcing border closures.
But when the couple were forced to stop at a Tamworth caravan park after car trouble, they found themselves slowly running out of time to make it back to WA before the state’s border closed.
Bob said the couple now faced the prospect of waiting until next Wednesday before they were up and running, and they hadn't been able to get more information about what their prospects were.
AMA WA president Andrew Miller is calling on the government to meet urgently with the state’s top healthcare professionals to ensure frontline workers were not “pawns” when it comes to important decisions being made.
Dr Miller said he had received thousands of messages from frontline doctors saying they were dissatisfied with the way the government had managed the pandemic.
“We’re at risk of having more cases than anywhere else in the country,” he said.
“I have never seen frontline doctors, as dedicated as passionate.
A second West Australian school has announced a decision to close with St Mark’s Anglican Community School in Hillarys moving to a distance learning program, following an earlier announcement from St Andrew’s Grammar in Dianella.
St Mark's is strongly urging families to keep children at home commencing Tuesday.
Where families could not take care of children at home, including those whose parents were frontline health or essential workers, supervision would be provided at school during normal school hours.
The school hours remained unchanged for them and they would also participate, supervised by staff, in the distance learning program.