Western Australia delays border reopening plan
Western Australia Premier Mark McGowan has pushed back the February 5 border reopening date amid concerns over the Omicron variant, leaving the state cut off from the rest of Australia.
Mr McGowan detailed the postponement in a Thursday night media conference, admitting “for some people it will be devastating”.
Citing a desire to see more children vaccinated and more adults with a booster, he said the state’s domestic border would remain closed on February 5 but with more exemptions for “compassionate cases”.
“Allowing hundreds or thousands of Omicron-infected people to fly straight into Perth, from February 5, with no testing, no quarantine and no public health measures would cause a flood of COVID across our state,” he said, in a 7.30pm (10.30pm AEDT) press conference.
“It would cause a surge in cases, a surge in hospitalisations and result in thousands of people not being able to work or go to school.
“And we know that bad health outcomes lead to economic pain.”
The exemptions include returning Western Australians with “strong recent connections or direct legitimate family connections” and compassionate grounds including funerals, palliative care and visiting terminally ill patients.
They also include “urgent and essential” medical treatment, specialist services such as health and emergency services workers and special considerations for extraordinary circumstances.
Those arrivals will need to have an approved G2G Pass, be fully vaccinated — or boosted if eligible — return a negative RAT within 24 hours of getting on a plane, do 14 days of self-quarantine and take a PCR test within 48 hours of arrival and on day 12.
International arrivals will face seven days in hotel quarantine followed by seven days in self-quarantine, as well as PCR testing on days one, six, nine and 12.
Mr McGowan highlighted the importance of a third dose in protecting against the more infectious new variant and pitched the change as a chance to get lots of people boosted before community transmission began.
“Unfortunately, the world changed in December when Omicron arrived,” he said.
“Of most concern was how easily transmissible and infectious Omicron is.
“Unfortunately, even double-dose-vaccinated people aren’t strongly protected against Omicron.
“Omicron is a whole new threat that we can’t ignore.”
While two doses of a vaccine appear to provide less protection from Omicron infection than Delta, South African data — cited by the European Medicines Agency — suggest double-dosed people still have 70 per cent protection against hospitalisation from Omicron.
No new date for border to reopen
No new date has been announced for the border to reopen, with WA health authorities instead opting to monitor what happens in eastern states.
Mr McGowan said WA’s booster shot rate currently sat at 25.8 per cent.
He said he was aiming to get that number as high as 80 or 90 per cent but stressed his government would be watching what happened “over east” throughout February.
He was hoping 35-38 per cent of the eligible population would have received a booster by February 5 but admitted the higher numbers would take “some time” to reach.
The Premier had previously said only an “unforeseen catastrophe” would push back the border reopening.
“It is an unforeseen catastrophe. And it’s an emergency,” he said.
“I mean, does anyone deny what’s going on over there (in eastern states) is not that?
“People aren’t going to work. Hospitals are overflowing. Hundreds of people are dying.”
State preparing for Omicron’s arrival
Mr McGowan and Health Minister Amber-Jade Sanderson outlined several steps the state was taking to prepare for Omicron’s eventual arrival, including ordering tens of millions of rapid antigen tests and planning to dial back elective surgery.
Mr McGowan said the state already had 1.5 million RATs, a number he hoped to see jump to 10 million by February 5 and 80 million by mid-April, at a cost of $480 million.
Ms Sanderson said elective surgery would be reduced to only categories one and two for “approximately eight weeks” from the date Omicron becomes “widespread in the community”.
The government is also trying to attract more doctors to the state and will cut quarantine requirements to seven days, with testing after release, for anyone doing so.
Any special arrangements for essential workers would be known “in the near future”.
Chief Health Officer Andy Robertson said only limited modelling was available to suggest what would happen if the state opened its borders as planned.
“There has been some preliminary modelling and which basically shows that if we open we would get a similar sort of spread as as we’d expect in other states,” he said.
“But there are still many factors that aren’t available on that Omicron modelling.”
WA’s updated transition plan (full detail)
From February 5 at 12.01 approved travellers are permitted to enter WA, or leave WA and return, with testing and quarantine requirements under the new expanded exemption criteria:
– Returning Western Australians, with strong recent connections or direct legitimate family connections with WA;
– Compassionate grounds including funeral, palliative care or terminally ill visitation;
– Member of the family of an approved traveller;
– People entering for urgent and essential medical treatment;
– Reasons of national and state security;
– Commonwealth and State officials, Members of Parliament, Diplomats;
– Provision of specialist skills not available in WA, health services, emergency service workers;
– People required to attend court matters, judicial officers and staff of court, tribunals and commissions; and
– Special considerations and extraordinary circumstances determined by the State Emergency Coordinator or Chief Health Officer.
INTERSTATE TRAVEL
If you’re coming from interstate into WA as an approved traveller, you will now need to meet the following requirements:
– Have an approved G2G Pass, under new exemption criteria;
– Be triple dose vaccinated if eligible (double dose vaccinated if not eligible for third);
– Provide proof of a negative Rapid Antigen Test within 24 hours before departure;
– Undertake 14 days of self-quarantine at a suitable premises, with the same requirements for household members at the self-quarantine premises;
– PCR testing within 48 hours of arrival and on day 12 of self-quarantine, and household members will also be required to do a PCR test on the traveller’s day 12.
– Subject to mandatory use of G2G Now and in-person checks by WA Police as required
Additional requirements are in place for domestic road travel to keep WA safe:
– Approved domestic travellers to limit travel to 1500km from road borders, to enable people to travel by road to suitable premises for quarantine in Perth from Eucla;
– Entry at the Kununurra border only for transport, freight and logistics and border community residents;
– Restricted travel into remote Aboriginal communities.
OVERSEAS TRAVEL
International travel into WA will be permitted with the following requirements:
– Meet the Commonwealth requirements to enter Australia under the arrivals cap;
– Undertake 14 days of mandatory quarantine including, seven days in hotel quarantine and seven days of self-quarantine at suitable premise, if eligible,
– PCR testing on days one, six, nine and 12, and household members will also be required to do a PCR test on the traveller’s day 12
– Subject to mandatory use of G2G Now and in-person checks by WA Police as required
– International travel in-directly into WA via another state or territory will be subject to the same entry and quarantine requirements as domestic travellers
