Residents from NSW or the ACT won’t be allowed to come to SA “this week”, but the state’s Transition Committee continues to look at when it can open its borders.
Last week, SA Health’s chief public medical officer Professor Nicola Spurrier said she wanted to see 14 days without community transmission in those jurisdictions before borders opened.
Abiding by that timeline, Premier Steven Marshall said the earliest the state could open up would be early next week.
“I don’t think it will be this week because Prof Spurrier made it very clear she was looking for 14 days with no community transmission,” he said on Monday.
“I don’t think we’ll reach that and the earliest we could reach that would be early next week.”
Mr Marshall said SA authorities looked closely at the epidemiology of interstate cases.
“The top line number, whilst interesting, doesn’t really give a picture of the risk for SA. If it’s a person in a supervised hotel quarantine, it’s not nearly as complex or as risky as someone we don’t know the origin of the infection,” he said.
“I’ve seen NSW have had a very low count today, just four. Some were working in the ED of hospitals so we need to chase that up.
“Sometimes jurisdictions report a positive, only for there to be subsequent tests and it be a false positive so you need to have a high level of data exchange between jurisdictions and that’s what we have with NSW and the ACT.”
Police Commissioner Grant Stevens said the Transition Committee was hopeful to relax the restrictions with the two jurisdictions.
He said high rates of testing and contact tracing were other trigger points, as well as the 14-day period of no community transmission.
“It means a lot to people to be able to travel into and out of those two locations, so we’re watching really closely,” he told The Advertiser.
“We’re hopeful, the way the NSW Government particularly is dealing with the current numbers they have, continues the way it is.
“It could be days (for borders to reopen) but it is really dependent upon what happens there.”
NSW recorded only four new infections on Monday, with the state’s total reaching 3929.
The state has seen its numbers gradually decrease over the past week.
Of those new cases, one person is in hotel quarantine while the other three, who are all healthcare workers, were locally acquired.
The ACT again recorded zero new infections and has no active cases. Its total remains at 113.
Despite the territory’s low infection rate, SA authorities treat the two jurisdictions as one because people can travel freely between them.
As of Sunday, SA had a total of 464 cases of COVID-19 with only one considered active.
The state’s 12-day streak of having zero new cases came to an end after a young women illegally flew from Victoria into Adelaide on Saturday en route to Alice Springs.
