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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2022-02-08 Daily Xml
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COVID-19 Media

The Hon. C.M. SCRIVEN (15:06): My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing regarding COVID information. Given that SA Health has now stopped streaming the Premier's daily COVID media conferences, can the minister explain exactly why the agency that is responsible for the health response to COVID will no longer broadcast the daily COVID information? Secondly, what exactly prevents SA Health from releasing COVID information before the Premier delivers his election advertisement? Are the minister and Premier scared that if people can just click a link to see the latest COVID information that they won't tune into live updates where they are forced to watch the government's political advertising?

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (15:07): I am sorry that the honourable member wasn't able to follow my earlier answer to her leader. I made the point very clearly that SA Health's COVID update is the update that is published on the SA Health website every afternoon.

The honourable member is asking me: why is it published so late? It's published so late because SA Health wants to get the information right. Not only do they get detailed epidemiological information, they also have to crosscheck it with what information is provided by the local health networks (LHNs) to make sure that, in particular, the deaths haven't been double counted. We have had problems of inaccuracies with death information and at times that relates to discrepancies between LHN information and information that's provided to the department.

Of course, I would remind honourable members and the South Australian community that the SA Health daily updates published on the website also often include information in relation to exposure sites, outbreaks and the like. SA Health has consistently published that information midafternoon. It has varied from time to time, but that has been the pattern. I have no doubt it will continue to be the pattern.

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