Page 1233 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 11 May 2021
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positive cases identified. I am pleased to report that the individual is well, and has now recovered and been cleared by ACT Health to conclude quarantine.
Testing remains an important part of our pandemic response as a community, and we continue to encourage anyone with symptoms to come forward for testing. As at 10 May the ACT has conducted more than 203,000 negative tests. Please continue to come forward to be tested if you are experiencing any symptoms, no matter how mild.
On 5 May 2021 New South Wales announced a new COVID-19 case in a Sydney resident who has not recently travelled overseas and does not work in a hotel quarantine, border or health setting. Genomic sequencing linked the case to a returned international traveller who had tested positive while undertaking quarantine at the Sydney health accommodation facility. New South Wales Health is investigating the missing link in transmission, as there is no known link between the new case and the hotel quarantine case. One household contact tested positive on 6 May 2021. The individuals had visited a number of locations in Sydney while potentially infectious.
Focused restrictions have been put in place within the ACT, which require anyone who has attended any of the New South Wales exposure locations, on the dates and at the times specified, to immediately get tested, quarantine for 14 days from the time they were there and contact ACT Health. Anyone who has attended a source investigation location on the dates and at the times specified must get tested for COVID-19 and self-isolate until a negative test result is received. Anyone who has recently travelled to Sydney is also being asked to continue to review the list of exposure locations and to follow the advice provided.
As previously noted, there have been two recent hotel transmission events in Western Australia resulting in locally acquired cases in the community. In response to a cluster of cases linked to the Mercure Hotel, one of whom was detected in Melbourne after travelling there, the Western Australian Premier announced a three-day lockdown for the Perth and Peel regions, commencing on 24 April.
Following the WA lockdown announcement, the ACT introduced new stay-at-home restrictions for anyone travelling from the Perth and Peel regions after 8 am on 24 April. In addition, travellers who had been to an identified exposure site were subject to additional conditions, dependent on their individual situation, including potential quarantine, self-isolation, testing and exemption conditions. The stay-at-home requirements in the ACT were lifted with effect from 2 am on 27 April, in line with WA.
However, in a separate incident, on 1 May the Western Australian government announced three new COVID-19 cases. The initial case was a security guard contracted to work in a different quarantine hotel, and who was subsequently found to have been infected by a returned international traveller. Two of this individual’s close contacts also tested positive. WA determined that a lockdown was not necessary at that time but introduced mandatory mask-wearing indoors and outdoors, and further tightened some gathering restrictions.
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