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

Contents

Coronavirus, Hotel Quarantine

Mr PICTON (Kaurna) (14:46): My question is to the Premier. Did Professor Spurrier or anyone in SA Health raise any concerns that they have had in the past fortnight about the risks of medi-hotels with the Premier, anyone in the cabinet or in the Premier's office?

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (14:47): Not specifically with me, but certainly what we have seen in recent weeks is an increasing number of people with infections in our medi-hotels in South Australia. If we go back six or eight weeks, it was zero every day; as of Friday, we had 17 in our hotels out of the total of 77 across the country. These numbers move around a lot. We have increased our capacity here in South Australia, so I think we are well and truly playing our part in the national repatriation of Australian citizens, and we have seen a spike.

One of the things that we did do was to look at the country of origin for those flights to see if there was something that we could learn from that. In fact, there was nothing which stood out from that data. We are playing our part in the national repatriation. I completely reject any suggestion that the volume is to do with this particular incidence.

Certainly, the information that has been provided to us was that it was a surface transmission. That could occur with one person; it could occur with 50 people on a site or 200 people on a site. It does mean that we have had to think about the protocols that we put in place here in South Australia and adjust them, and that's exactly and precisely what we have done.