South Australia has altered its Covid-19 close contact quarantine requirements to bring them in line with national standards.
Earlier this week, Premier Peter Malinauskas told the state’s Covid Ready Committee that the easing of restrictions would immediately be replaced by his newly established Emergency Management Council sub-committee of Cabinet.
The committee held its first meeting on Friday morning to discuss the state’s Covid-19 situation.
Based on those discussions, it was announced later in the day that all household close contacts, regardless of their Covid-19 vaccination stance, will need to isolate for seven days and not 14 days.
As of midnight on Friday night, a close contact will be considered a person who had been in contact with an infected person for four hours or more, bringing its restrictions in line with the national standard.
Prior to this, a person around an infected individual for just 15 minutes was considered a close contact in South Australia.
There were also changes to how long a recovered Covid-19 patient could be deemed a close contact, increasing from eight weeks to 12.
Mr Malinauskas told waiting reporters it was important to make the right decision when it came to relaxing the state’s quarantine rule for close contacts.
“Throughout the entire of the pandemic, I’ve backed the health advice but we need to make sure we get the balance right.
“The arrangement where someone in the household who is a close contact needs to do 14 days of isolation (if unvaccinated) when thouxjmtzywgh they don‘t have Covid while someone with Covid (who is fully vaccinated) can do seven days is a unique set of circumstances that needs to be examined very closely.”
He also ruled out finishing the school term early amid the Covid chaos that is impacting teachers because there were “profound” consequences of closing schools early.
“If you’re running a small business, you’re in individual contractor, or a single parent and you have nothing to replace child caring arrangements, closing down school for a week is a big deal and I’m not going to arrive at that sort of judgment lightly.”
The Australian Education Union revealed on Wednesday about 76 per cent of schools and preschools had between one to 10 teachers absent each day, and 71 per cent of sites operated with combined classes with up to 55 students as a result of the pandemic.
The union has called for the final week of the term to become student free days and close its doors because educators were “stretched to the limit” and come at the expense of their physical and mental health.
