Question Time

COVID-19 Hospital Response

Mr MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Leader of the Opposition) (14:10): My question is to the Premier. Will our hospital system be ready from 23 November to be able to live with COVID?

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (14:10): I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question. Today, we have announced that from 23 November we will be removing those interstate border restrictions that have been so harsh but necessary to keep our state safe and our economy strong, but South Australia has risen to the challenge.

We have an extraordinarily high vaccination rate in our state and that is reducing the risk of community transmission, and of course we are reducing overall that transmission potential. The answer is: yes, we do need to remove those border restrictions and, yes, we do need to make sure that our hospital system is in place.

I do make the point that we will be keeping the test, trace, isolate and quarantine protocols in place for as long as possible—certainly for the foreseeable future—so that people who do become infected and their close contacts will need to go into a quarantine arrangement, and we will be keeping public health and social measures in place by and large as we lift these border restrictions.

That will give us additional time, before there is significant seeding in South Australia, to further increase that protection by getting that vaccination rate up. We have seen the vaccination rate in New South Wales and the ACT soar extraordinarily high. I have every expectation that South Australia will be able to do exactly the same, but today we have given the people of South Australia certainty, reward, for the great work that they have done over such an extended period of time.

With regard to getting our hospitals ready, you would have noted, Mr Speaker, that in recent weeks we have announced various elements of our COVID-ready package—a $123 million package—which is providing additional places, spaces, in our hospitals. It is also providing for more doctors, nurses, paramedics and midwives in our system across South Australia.

We are also doing a lot more work with regard to out-of-hospital care, which is good for freeing up space within our hospitals, but of course extraordinarily good for patients who want to be out of hospital. They want to be in their own home, in their own environment. We are told by friends at Wellbeing SA and others that that is a more appropriate place for people for some conditions within our hospitals, and so we are very pleased to be able to accelerate this as part of our COVID-ready package.

Make no doubt, the Delta variant will be coming into South Australia. It has been in South Australia on dozens of occasions over the last couple of months and, because of the great work of South Australians being very vigilant, we have not allowed this to translate into widespread community transmission like we have seen in other states—but it will come in. What we need to do is to make sure that we are as protected as possible.

That is why we are urging all South Australians to get vaccinated. There is now a big incentive on the table. We have made it very clear that once we get to the 90 per cent double-vaccinated for those 12 years and over we will be able to remove the vast majority of restrictions in South Australia, including the restriction for any quarantine for those people double-vaccinated coming in from overseas.

I think that this is an enormous incentive for people to do the right thing. From our state government's perspective, we are making it as easy as possible at the moment to get vaccinated. We are providing people with enormous choice about where they get vaccinated and, quite frankly, South Australia is rising to the challenge. I think that in the last three or four weeks we have had a vaccination dose rate of more than 100,000 administrations. That is fantastic, and I want to take my hat off to all South Australians. I also want to take my hat off to all those people working within SA Health who have done a great job of administering those COVID vaccine doses.