COVID-19 Testing

Mr PICTON (Kaurna) (15:07): My question is to the Premier. Why has the government decided to no longer follow up people who have been required to get a COVID-19 test for coming into South Australia and have not done so, and is there specific health advice that the Premier is relying upon for not following up these people who have not complied with the emergency management direction that is legally in force in South Australia?

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (15:08): I think I have answered that question already, but I am happy to go back to the question and provide a more fulsome answer. There is a much lower level risk at the moment. We are not concerned about single cases. There is an inevitability of cases in South Australia that is going to occur.

Our role is to get the balance right between the health risks and also the health risks associated with economic lockdown, and so we have formed the opinion, based upon the advice that the Doherty Institute provided to the national cabinet, that at 80 per cent fully vaccinated for those 16 and over it was time to lift those state borders. That means that cases will be coming in, and so a lower level of surveillance is required. We will continue to have some surveillance in place and we will continue to put roadblocks along the way for this disease coming in, in big numbers, in a very short period of that. That is because every day that we continue down this path the higher the vaccination rate is in South Australia, which further reduces the transmission potential here in our state.

I do also bring the house's attention to the fact that there will be a national cabinet meeting this afternoon. Omicron is the latest variant of concern that has been identified by the World Health Organization. The federal government has moved very promptly to close the international borders to people who are coming in from high-risk situations. We do that to buy ourselves some time as a nation because we really need to understand what the specific transmissibility of this disease is, the severity of this disease, and also we need to understand the efficacy of the current vaccines to this new strain. We don't have that information at the moment. We are gathering that information.

We have high level cooperation from other jurisdictions around the world. Certainly, the AHPPC has been meeting very regularly over the last 24, 48, 72 hours—I think many, many meetings. The health ministers have had a meeting today, and of course at 4 o'clock Adelaide time I will be on the national cabinet agenda, so I will be able to provide further information to South Australia following that meeting.