While Victoria is heaving a sigh of relief from the COVID-19 spread reporting no new cases for the 18th consecutive day, South Australia seems in panic-mode with a real fear of second wave hitting the state for reasons the state authorities are still struggling to figure out.
After an aged care home managed by Anglicare South Australia, was locked down yesterday following two nurses a mother and daughter testing positive, two more aged care workers have tested positive overnight. Facing the growing COVID-19 spread which looks very similar to Victoria’s killer second wave, the state’s health authorities are doing whatever they can to contain it.
States are closing their borders on South Australia in order to keep it safe for their subjects. Western Australia has already closed its borders, telling shocked arrivals from SA on Sunday they would need to have a coronavirus test and self-quarantine for 14 days or fly back home.
Tasmanian Premier Peter Gutwein has said any arrivals into his state from South Australia since last Monday (November 9) must undergo self-quarantine.
New South Wales and Victoria are seriously looking into it.
Well Victoria cannot be blamed if they do as having been longest under the strictest restrictions, Victorians just earned and were granted their freedoms – rare these days – only last week to move freely anywhere in Victoria – without having to have a reason to leave home.
As of November 17, 2020, there are only 3 active cases in Victoria with 2 people being in hospital and none of them in the intensive care. The number of people who have had the virus and have fully recovered from it is 19,523.
Victoria has endured a sever second wave of the virus resulting in total of 20,345 cases of COLVID-19 cases and 819 deaths in the state. In contrast New South Wales has had only 4,313 case of COVID-19 with only 55 deaths since the start of the pandemic.
While the state of New South Wales has tested 3, 299, 669 people for COVID-19 3405,348 Victorians have been tested.
As of now South Australia is regarded as a coronavirus hotspot. And if the spread is not arrested effectively, the first Test match between Australia and India next month 17-21 December may have to be moved.
Victorian government is asking anyone who has been in SA in the last 14 days to check the exposure sites listed on the SA Health website and take the appropriate actions.
Experts believe the next 24 to 48 hours would be “critical” for contact tracers to arrest the outbreak or risk a Victoria like state-wide lockdown.
As of November 17, there were 34 active cases of COVID-19 with 2 people being in hospital, not in intensive care. There have been 544 cases of COVID-19 in South Australia to date of which 506 people have fully recovered. The total number of COVID-19 related deaths in South Australia is 4.
The state has conducted 590, 881 COVID-19 tests, a number which needs to ramped up in and around areas where there are or have been cases of COVID-19.
One case see there are clear parallels the COVID-19 stories of Victoria and South Australia.
Victorian’s second wave started off in a ‘quarantine’ hotel where the ‘infected’ person came was from a large family that had large family gatherings and the virus got passed on very quickly from one to another in no time while the contact tracing was not actually achieving any real results and thus failed allowing the virus to multiply unchecked and unabated.
In South Australia too it has its origins in a quarantine hotel, from a person belonging to a large family which has had some 15 to 17 cases among the large extended family members. And many of them like in Victoria – have been working in low paid jobs where they cannot afford to take time off work and thus things get worse.
One would like to hope the parallels and similarities end here and no more people end up as death statistics.