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With South Australia this morning recording two new cases of COVID-19, bringing the cluster to five infections in total, and confirmation that the outbreak is the Delta strain, the state will go into lockdown from 6pm today.
The restrictions will last for seven days, and South Australians will only have five reasons to leave the house:
- Care and compassionate reasons like taking care of a loved one
- Essential work
- Purchase of essential goods like food and medication
- Medical reasons including vaccination and COVID-19 testing
- For exercise, with the limitation that only people from the same household can exercise together.
Schools will be closed from tomorrow, with teachers granted 24 hours to transition to online learning and elective surgeries will be paused.
Restaurants will be forced to operate as takeaway only, and exercise from home must be limtied to 90 minutes per day and within 2.5km of the home.
"We hate putting these restrictions in place, but we have just one chance to get this right," SA Premier Steven Marshall said.
"This is moving very quickly. We first got a positive confirmation at 2.30am yesterday, and we're moving as quickly as we can to stop the spread of this particular cluster.
"This is highly transmissable, we've seen this in Victoria. It's been moving extraordinarily quickly that we don't want this moving right across this state."
One of the cases is linked to a close contact from yesterday's Modbury case, with the fifth case dining at The Greek on Halifax Street in the CBD.
As such, anyone who attended the restaurant on Saturday 17 July from 6-10pm, including everyone in their household, must quarantine for 14 days.
In terms of support for businesses impacted by the seven-day lockdown, Marshall says he expects the same levels of assistance from the Commonwealth Government as what has been extended to New South Wales and Victoria.
However, because the support payments to affected workers are not activated until the second week of a lockdown, the SA Treasurer is looking at more immediate support for businesses and will have an announcement within the next 24 hours as to what that might entail.
"I spoke to the Prime Minister today, he's assured me we'll get the same deal as other states," Marshall said.
"I'm hopeful we can actually stop this dead in the water."
Updated at 11.23am AEST on 20 July 2021.
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