SA Police Commissioner Grant Stevens has warned the public that South Australia could face restrictions on the level of March this year if health authorities cannot get on top of a COVID-19 cluster which has now reached 17 people.
Stevens said these type of restrictions would only be imposed in a “worst-case scenario”, but cautioned that some “hard decisions” would have to be made if the current cluster went beyond 17 people.
“Unfortunately, depending on how significant this spread is, we could be talking about quite wide restrictions that we saw back in March-April,” Stevens told ABC Radio this morning.
“But that’s worst-case scenario, and it’s not a decision that has to be made right now, but we certainly have to be thinking about what the possibilities are.
“You have to also bear in mind that if the community spread has extensively gone beyond the 17 people we know about now, then we have to make some hard decisions and that’s part of the job.”
The commissioner also said a localised approach to tackling new clusters would be the first step taken to manage SA’s new COVID-19 situation.
“We’ve had some success in the past I think with plenty of public notification shutting down key services in particular locations and then encouraging everybody to do the right thing in those areas,” he said.
“That’s been quite successful for us before and I think that’s probably the first step.”
