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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-11-17 Daily Xml
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Coronavirus, Parafield Cluster

Ms LUETHEN (King) (14:14): My question is to the Premier. Can the Premier update the house on what measures the government is taking to address the Parafield COVID cluster?

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (14:14): I thank the member for King for her excellent question. I said last week that COVID had challenged us but it had not beaten us, but there is no doubt that we now face the biggest challenge that we have had since the outset of the coronavirus.

The good news is that we have world-leading health experts and world-leading systems here in South Australia that have already kept us safe and strong in the past, and I am quite sure they will do exactly the same thing into the future. From the start of this pandemic, the approach of this government has been to listen to the health experts and then to put their advice into action as quickly as possible, and that has meant that we have remained in front of this disease.

I can advise the house that we are acting swiftly and decisively to stop the spread of the Parafield cluster. As outlined in a previous answer, we have significantly increased the capacity of our testing, especially in the vicinity of Parafield. We had more than 5,300 people who got tested yesterday.

Testing is absolutely critical and the good news is we have an excellent team at SA Pathology, led by the clinical lead, Dr Tom Dodd, who is overseeing this. We also want to thank the private pathology services in South Australia, in particular Clinpath and ACL, for their efforts in processing tests throughout the pandemic but in particular yesterday when there was a very significant surge.

Importantly, the government has very significantly increased our contact tracing team. The lead in that is Professor Katina D'Onise. Also, can I just alert the parliament to note that Air Commodore Margot Forster has also gone into this team to strengthen our focus on that contact tracing. They have been working around the clock. I know for a fact that they were still doing contact tracing after midnight on Sunday night. In fact, I know one person who was providing information to the contact tracing team at 1.30am.

This has been an incredible effort from Professor D'Onise and her team and we are very, very grateful for that. They have had to remain, if you like, match fit during a period where they haven't had a lot of contact tracing to do, so they have been doing a range of exercises to make sure that they are ready for exactly and precisely this situation, and now of course we are seeing them in action.

I would also like to acknowledge the great support of the Western Australian health team, who have been providing some additional services in terms of contact tracing, just as we did with Victoria. Western Australia uses exactly the same systems that we use, so they have offered their services, and my understanding is that we have taken them up on that.

Obviously, yesterday I announced that we would suspend all international flights into South Australia for the remainder of this week. This was a decision by Australian Border Force on our recommendation and we are very grateful for that. Yesterday, I spoke to the Prime Minister and he offered additional ADF support. Already yesterday there was an additional 20 ADF support provided, and my understanding is today that will flex up to 45 additional ADF support during this period.

With regard to aged care, which was a real problem in Victoria, can I just assure this house and the people of South Australia that we have a very different protocol from other parts of the country and other parts of the world. If anybody does become infected within one of our aged-care facilities—and I emphasise right now that there hasn't been a positive test of a resident in an aged-care facility in South Australia—they would be removed and taken to the Royal Adelaide Hospital or an appropriate hospital here in South Australia because we do recognise that this is a much higher level of risk here in South Australia.

We have changed our restrictions. We have gone in hard and early so that we can stay ahead of this insidious disease here in our state.

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