The following statement is taken from the WA Government Facebook page and refers to the circuit breaker lockdown that Perth was placed into last night by Premier Mark McGowan.
IMPORTANT: Following the detection of another local case in Perth’s northern suburbs, Perth and Peel will enter a circuit-breaker lockdown for a minimum of four days from midnight tonight.
Tonight’s new positive case is a man in his 30s – he worked at the Indian Ocean Brewery – and he had a meal at the brewery on the same night as the original case on the evening of Tuesday 22 June.
Once again, it only involved fleeting contact with the original case.
Tonight we also had genomic sequencing confirm that the original case, who had visited Sydney, is now confirmed as carrying the Delta variant, the same variant from the Sydney outbreak.
That is why, based on advice from the Chief Health Officer, effective from midnight tonight, Perth and Peel will enter a full lockdown for four days, at a minimum.
We will continue to review the situation, based on testing numbers and information from our contact tracing team, and provide updates when we can.
We hope this will be a circuit-breaker which will give our testers and contact tracers time to nail down a truer picture of how far this latest outbreak has spread.
We are worried this new variant can linger in the community and can transmit between people very easily.
So please, I ask everyone, to do the right thing here and follow the health advice and instructions we are putting in place.
Effective midnight tonight:
People will be required to stay at home unless they need to:
- work because they can’t work from home or remotely – a full list of essential workers and services will be available on www.wa.gov.au as soon as possible;
- shop for essentials like groceries, medicine and necessary supplies;
- attend to medical or health care needs including emergencies, compassionate requirements and looking after the vulnerable;
- be vaccinated; and
- exercise with a maximum of two adults from the same household (children under 18 years are not counted), limited to one hour per day within a 5km radius from home, and masks must be worn, except for vigorous exercise.
The following restrictions apply for the lockdown period:
- People can enter the Perth and Peel areas only to access or deliver essential health and emergency services and other essential requirements.
- Restaurants, cafés, pubs and bars to provide takeaway service only.
- Casinos, nightclubs, entertainment venues and public venues to close.
- Universities, TAFEs and training colleges to close.
- Beauty, nail and hair services to close.
- Retail is permitted but only for essential health services and essential goods such as supermarkets, pharmacies, petrol station, hardware and others. Non-essential retail restricted to click-and-collect or delivery only.
- Public venues such as swimming pools, recreation centres, playgrounds and skateparks to close.
- Fitness venues including private exercise venues, gyms, pilates, yoga, dance studios to close
- Places of worship and cultural institutions to close.
- Community sport is not permitted.
- Private outdoor gatherings are not permitted and events and functions are not permitted.
- Weddings are restricted to five people for compassionate reasons only, and funerals are restricted to 10 people.
- No visitors will be allowed in homes, unless it is for essential services, critical maintenance, caregiving and compassionate reasons or an emergency.
- Travel outside the Perth and Peel region is not permitted unless you are exempt to obtain or provide essential goods or services or other compassionate and medical reasons.
- Schools, boarding schools and childcare centres in the Perth and Peel regions will remain open, except for the three schools that have been directly impacted as they are a listed exposure site.
- Unless exempt, people in Perth and Peel are required to wear masks outside of the home, in all indoor settings, on public transport, and outdoors at all times – except for vigorous exercise.
- Anyone who has travelled outside of the Perth and Peel regions since Sunday must continue to wear face masks in public, as per the existing directions.
- Visits to aged/disability care are prohibited except for essential care, compassionate reasons, end of life and advocacy.
Visits to hospitals are prohibited except for compassionate reasons (eg. end of life, accompanying a child, supporting partner giving birth). Priority 2 and 3 elective surgeries will be postponed.
All these restrictions come into force from midnight tonight.
We want everyone to follow the advice, do the right thing, and when in doubt – use common sense.
I know today’s developments are deflating.
But we can take comfort in the fact we have acted quickly.
We introduced restrictions, including mandatory mask requirements which will hopefully have helped minimise any spread.
Western Australia, you have done it before.
You’ve listened to the health advice and come together to keep each other safe, and to keep our state strong.
Now is the time to do it again.
It’s time to prove to the rest of Australia – and the world – what can be achieved when a community comes together.
