South Australia on alert as new COVID-19 outbreak emerges
Sydney, Australia, Nov 16 (efe-epa).- South Australia is on high alert after authorities on Monday reported 17 new locally transmitted COVID-19 infections of in two days, the first outbreak to be detected in the state since April.
The authorities of Australia, as with those of other Asia-Pacific countries, have reacted swiftly and strongly to outbreaks since the beginning of the pandemic, which has helped to more effectively mitigate the spread of infections.
The new cases in South Australia, home to 1.8 million of the more than 25 million inhabitants of the country, are linked to four infections reported Sunday in Adelaide, including an 81-year-old woman and a person who works in a hotel operating as a quarantine center (medi-hotel).
“We haven’t got the genomics yet, but I’m absolutely certain it has come from a medi-hotel,” South Australia’s Chief Public Health Officer Nicola Spurrier told national broadcaster ABC on Monday.
“We just kept getting positives coming off the machine,” she added.
It is thought that 15 of the cases involve one family.
The new cases also include two caregivers for the elderly, which has forced the closure of an aged care facility. Other closures include a fast food restaurant, a school and a preschool due to positive cases in those locations. A supermarket has also been closed after the elderly woman visited Thursday.
There are also fears of transmission at Yatala jail after one worker tested positive.
The outbreak has prompted neighboring states to impose restrictions on movement from South Australia as it has become a focus of COVID-19 cases in the country.
The jurisdiction that has accumulated more than 530 cases of COVID-19, including four deaths.
Australia has recorded more than 27,730 cases of COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic, including 907 deaths. Most of those are attributed to the recent large outbreak in the city of Melbourne, the second most populated in the country, which shot up the numbers of infections and deaths nationwide and paralyzed economic reactivation plans. EFE-EPA
wat/tw
