The number of people in hospital today dropped to 233, including 21 in intensive care and five patients on ventilators.
South Australia also recorded one death, bringing the total since the start of the pandemic to 121 and 117 since the Government opened the state’s borders on November 23.
There were 10,079 tests carried out yesterday – about half of the state’s total daily testing capacity – with Marshall urging those with COVID-19 symptoms to seek PCR testing over rapid antigen testing given to the greater accuracy of the tests.
With the state election looming, chief public health officer Professor Nicola Spurrier said SA Health was working with the state’s Electoral Commission to determine how voting could be carried out in a COVID-safe way.
The Government last month amended the electoral regulations to allow people who are COVID-positive or close contacts to conduct a postal vote.
However, postal voting requires people to apply in advance, meaning those forced to quarantine at short notice could be barred from both postal and in-person voting.
Spurrier said SA Health was working with the Electoral Commission to determine whether close contacts of positive COVID-19 cases could leave quarantine to attend polling booths.
But she said it was unlikely that positive cases would be granted the same exemption.
“It is important if there are large numbers of people who are close contacts or cases that it might have an impact on the election result,” she said.
“Clearly people don’t know ahead of time that they’re going to have COVID, so it’s hard to think ahead of time to make a postal vote and clearly that would be the same for close contacts.
“We will support that (election) as much as we possibly can from a health perspective as we have with many other jurisdictions in different sectors in our community.”
In a statement, the Electoral Commission told that it was consulting with SA Health on a “raft of measures” to ensure people could safely vote.
A spokesperson said the commission was also speaking to interstate electoral commissions to find out how they conducted elections over the past two years.
The spokesperson said measures agreed to in the 2022 State Election COVID-19 Management Plan include:
- The appointment of a State Election COVID-19 Response Coordinator
- A dedicated hygiene officer at every polling place
- Fully-vaccinated polling officials
- COVID Safe Check-ins via QR codes (or manual)
- Mandatory masks for polling officials and electors
- Social distancing
- Hand sanitising stations
- Queue management
- Frequent and thorough cleaning of high-touch surfaces
- Single use pencils
SA Best today called on Marshall to urgently recall both houses of parliament so that legislative changes could be passed to allow COVID-positive people and their close contacts to safely vote at the election.
The Upper House is scheduled to return on Tuesday, but the Lower House won’t sit before the election.
Last month, Labor and the crossbench called on Marshall to allow emergency sittings on February 8, 9 and 10 to debate the government’s COVID crisis management.
But Marshall did not concur, telling at the time that his focus was “on listening to the experts and keeping SA safe”.
In a statement this morning, SA Best MLC Frank Pangallo said the potential impacts of the pandemic on the state election were “deeply concerning and are above politics”, warning some could miss out on voting.
“That is why I am calling for the urgent recall of both Houses of Parliament – the government can no longer hide behind the security of the Lower House not sitting again until May after the election has been decided,” he said
