Australia confines the city of Perth for a Community Contagion of Covid-19

Globe Live Media, Sunday, January 31, 2021

A good part of the state of Western Australia, including the city of Perth, entered strict confinement this Sunday after a worker in one of the hotels scheduled for quarantine tested positive for covid-19, after 14 days without community infections in the country and more than ten months in that state.

Western Australian Prime Minister Mark McGowan told a news conference that from Sunday night to Friday night, “the entire Perth metropolitan area, the Peel region and the South West region will enter into full lockdown.”

The ruler indicated that, according to the first investigations, the infected hotel employee had worked on the same floor as a traveler infected with the British variant of the coronavirus at the Sheraton Four Points hotel in Perth.

“We are continuing to investigate how exactly the infection was transmitted. He developed symptoms on January 28 and phoned to say that he could not work in the quarantine center,” McGowan said, noting that trackers are trying to find out the extent of possible infections.

Faced with this new case, the residents of the city of Perth, of two million inhabitants, and other confined areas will have to remain in their cases, with the purchase of essential goods, medical needs, essential jobs and one hour of exercise a day as the only exceptions, always with a sanitary mask.

The confinement will mean the closure of schools, bars, gyms, sports halls and cinemas, while restaurants will only be able to provide take away food.

The measures were decreed a few hours after Australia announced the reopening of its travel bubble without quarantine with New Zealand, after the neighboring country did not register any new contagion in recent days.

Australia has so far recorded 28,806 COVID-19 cases, including 909 deaths and 78 active cases since the pandemic began a year ago.