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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-10-13 Daily Xml
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COVID-19 Quarantine

Mr DULUK (Waite) (15:06): My question is to the Premier. Can the Premier please explain to the house what criteria SA Health use when deciding who enters the home quarantine trial program and who goes into hotel quarantine when returning to South Australia? Additionally, when will the state government fully implement the home quarantine program?

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (15:06): I thank the member for Waite for his question on quarantine arrangements for when people come in. There are in fact three different types of quarantine that we have. We have, of course, the hotel quarantine, we have the home-based quarantine which is supervised by SA Police, and we have the home-based quarantine which is supervised using the home quarantine app, which was pioneered here in South Australia.

SA Health does an assessment of the risk associated with the person that's coming in. One of those areas of assessment is whether or not people have access to a place which is secure and isolated from other people visiting. Some people have made an application to do home-based quarantine and they are living with six people; this would not be appropriate. Other people may need some extra support, so they would move into the hotel quarantine arrangements. Increasingly, what we are seeing is a movement towards home-based quarantine.

One of the things we have done to prepare for that is make sure that we can have an application which can supervise a large number of people and reduce the risk that they may come into contact with other people. This home-based quarantine app, developed here in South Australia in my department, uses facial recognition software as well as a geolocator. At random times during the day, the person gets a call and they need to be where they are meant to be and they need to show their face. In a way, this makes sure this is where they are. Of course, if they are not there, then we send somebody out to determine why that is the case.

It has worked very well. It started to be used in New South Wales almost two weeks ago now and it is going to start the rollout in Victoria, so every South Australian should feel very proud. Hotel quarantine has been, if you like, the workhorse of the quarantine capacity we have in South Australia. We have in excess of 1,000 hotel rooms in South Australia. The member would be aware that we have currently a weekly cap of 265 people who are coming in from overseas. We sometimes go above that cap because we do have additional—

Mr DULUK: Point of order, sir: just to resolve the point of relevance. Premier, especially my constituents want to know when will the home quarantine be fully implemented as per your recent press release stating it was going to be in October?

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: Directly answering the question of the member, we conducted a pilot in September on people returning from interstate using the home-based quarantine app. Then, in addition to that, we have done around 90, I think, with the international pilot. That's being finalised at the moment.

I think we have currently, or certainly as of Monday, about 150 people still in home-based quarantine, but we are very likely to flex that up to around a thousand within the coming days. This will be a combination of people who are coming from interstate as well as those people who are coming from overseas. As I said, the methodology for determination is made by SA Health, but they also make a reference to South Australia Police to make sure that the person who is in that home-based quarantine is suitable for that type of quarantine arrangement.

If the member would like any further information, I am more than happy to arrange a briefing which can give specific information. It will evolve over time. There is some consideration at the moment of moving from 14 days' home-based quarantine down to seven. We are not signed up to that in South Australia, but New South Wales has already suggested that this is something they will implement next month. That's not something we're contemplating at the moment, but ultimately it might be something which is appropriate down the track. I am happy to provide a further briefing for the member at his convenience.

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