Week 42 - COVID strikes back in Western Australia

 Edited BY


G P Kennedy


Simon – Perth, WA




Hi everyone, hope you are all well.



Well, it's been an interesting few days in here.



We have not had a case of community transmission of COVID for 10 months here.



Then suddenly on Sunday nearly 2 weeks ago at around lunchtime a case was reported.



It was a security guard working in a hotel that was being used for hotel quarantine. By 6pm the entire city was under a hard lockdown for 5 days.



Travel was restricted and you needed a sign-off by your employer to drive around, schools were shut as were most businesses. 



There were restrictions on most items at supermarkets and everyone had to either scan into venues via the SafeWA App.


You could also manually sign in to enable contact tracing. 




Nobody was allowed to visit anyone else and weddings were canceled and funerals limited to 10 people. MaSks were compulsory outside for everyone over 11 and you even had to wear them in a car if not on your own. 



A list of locations the infected guy had been at was distributed and everyone there was asked to get tested.



Over the next few days, tens of thousands of tests were carried out.




After five days of no other cases being reported the hard lockdown was removed.



Some restrictions still remain such as mask-wearing. These will be in effect until midnight on Saturday.



It has been a bit strange for us after months of virtually no restrictions but we are nearly at the end of it now.



It’s been amazing how just about every single person has done the right thing. Nobody is out and about without a mask and if you look into passing cars and work vans all the adults are wearing them.



We have had it so good for so long that nobody wants any restrictions back so we are all doing what we need to.




It’s crazy how quickly one case can get out.


But State Government can react to a situation and how well people can obey a set of rules when they are immediate, fair, and in their best interests. 



If this model was repeated everywhere and had of been used last year I believe the world would be in a different situation now.



We’ll be back to ‘normal’ by the weekend. Wonder how long for…

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