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ACT residents are able to travel to South Australia as of midnight last night without spending 14 days in quarantine, although they aren't able to do so by car as the Festival State's authorities still don't consider NSW to be a safe zone.
Despite the positive developments for the ACT, SA Police Commissioner Grant Stevens said ongoing isolated cases of community transmission in NSW meant current restrictions on the state would be in place indefinitely.
"As of midnight tonight, people wishing to travel between the ACT and South Australia will be able to do so without having to quarantine when arriving in South Australia," Commissioner Stevens said yesterday.
"They will be required to fulfill in the pre-approval online as with all other safe community transmission zones, and people will be required to declare that they have not been outside of a safe community transmission zone for the 14-day period prior to traveling into South Australia.
"This is our way of assuring as best as possible that those people traveling between South Australia and other places have not exposed themselves unnecessarily to the risk of contracting COVID-19."
He explained visitors from the ACT are only able to arrive in SA by plane.
"It's simply not possible for us to be confident that a person driving between ACT and South Australia has not had contact with members of the New South Wales community," he said.
"We're hopeful that the situation with NSW will continue to improve. My advice from health is that they are doing an exceptional job with contact tracing, and they are confident that the situation will improve there to the point where we can lift that 14-day quarantine.
"It's an open-ended timeframe because NSW is continuing to identify isolated cases of community transmission. And the advice from the chief public health officer is that we want to see a better situation in terms of community transmission before we relax the restrictions on NSW.
Updated at 3:53pm AEST on 15 September 2020.
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