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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-03-25 Daily Xml
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Coronavirus

The Hon. C.M. SCRIVEN (14:23): My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. Why, unlike other states, is SA Health refusing to provide details of where identified COVID-19 patients come from? What advice did the minister or his agency provide to the Premier that led him to say on radio, 'In terms of our curve, we are in front,' and is it actually the case, particularly on a per capita basis, that South Australia is in front when data shows that we are very similar or worse than other states?

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order! The Minister for Health and Wellbeing.

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:24): The first question, as I recall it, was about identifying locations of confirmed cases. Let's be clear: the Chief Public Health Officer in South Australia, Associate Professor Nicola Spurrier, is very keen for that information to be available to the public. That is why she has publicly said that she is continuing to ask the commonwealth to post heat maps, as they call them; in other words, maps that show the concentrations of confirmed cases both within the metropolitan area and country South Australia. My understanding is that those heat maps are expected to be posted this week and we look forward to that.

In terms of South Australia being ahead of the curve, I think the Premier has a lot to be proud of. We all, as South Australians, have a lot to be proud of. As I highlighted yesterday to the Legislative Council, we have one of the highest COVID-19 testing regimes in the world. My understanding is that there is only one jurisdiction in the world that has undertaken more tests per 100,000 head of population than South Australia. We are also ahead of the curve again in the SA Pathology realm in the way that we have been operating the drive-through facilities, and there is a lot of work being done in other domains of SA Health which I believe mean that we are in a much better position than we would have been.

In particular with the testing regime, we have a line of sight into community contamination that other jurisdictions do not have. That helps us in terms of getting an understanding of what is happening in the community, and the contact tracing work has been exemplary. I might take this opportunity to see if I can reference an example of that—no, perhaps it will take too long. However, let me make the point that in some other jurisdictions there can be up to a third of the cases that are still under investigation, whereas it is very rare in South Australia to have more than two or three cases at any one time under investigation.

What does that reflect? It reflects the extraordinary work being done by the Communicable Disease Control Branch, led by Dr Louise Flood. Let's understand what they are doing: they are getting reports of confirmed cases, and it is now up to 170 people. You need to identify who are those people, who have they had contact with and when did they have contact with them? That is a mammoth task. We have needed and have added resources to that team because of the magnitude of the task.

Other jurisdictions have, shall we say, more cases under investigation, and I appreciate that there will be lots of different reasons for that, but one of the reasons why our 'under investigation' rate is so low is because of the work of that branch. I have a record of a place where I can locate that data for you, so I have done that. According to a report dated 20 March—so that is five days old—as at that date, for example, Queensland had 184 cases and 127 were under investigation; New South Wales had 382 cases with 91 under investigation; by comparison, South Australia, on that day, had an unusually high rate of seven out of 50, which is 14 per cent; whereas 127 out of 184 I can assure you is well above 14 per cent, as is 91 out of 382.

I want to take this opportunity, and I thank the honourable member for giving me the opportunity, to pay tribute to yet another SA Health team that is delivering a world-class response in a global pandemic.

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