Western Australia is bracing for Covid-19 cases to skyrocket in the coming weeks, with Premier Mark McGowan calling the spread of Omicron “inevitable”.
The state introduced a raft of new measures on Friday to come in once case loads inevitably peak in the state, but harsher restrictions aren’t currently being considered.
Under the new settings, rules around casual contacts, close contacts and isolation requirements will change.
Mr McGowan said the future settings would give the community, business and industry time to prepare once the state began to see higher levels of cases.
“I don’t want people to think it’s over and time to get complacent,” he said.
“The numbers will rise, but it is easy to keep it under control with restrictions, than if we had hundreds of new cases arriving on planes each and every day without proper safety measures in place.
“With the Omicron variant, we know it is impossible to eliminate and it spreads fast.”
WA recorded nine new cases of Covid on Friday, all linked to the existing outbreak in the state.
One case is a close contact of the Willagee IGA sub-cluster, and three are linked to a nightclub cluster – two from The Library club in Northbridge and one from the Hip-e club in Leederville.
One is a close contact of the Coolbellup cluster.
Two are from the Wheatbelt, one from Cunderdin and one in Goomalling.
Several of Friday’s cases were infectious in the community.
In the announcement on Friday, Mr McGowan said he didn’t have a time frame for when cases would rise, but wanted the community to be prepared.
Under the new rules, casual contacts won’t be considered, and close contacts will refer to household contact, an intimate partner or someone who has had a close intxjmtzyweraction with someone while they were infectious.
It means people should get a test if they spent more than 15 minutes close to an infectious person without a mask, or two hours in a small room with an infectious person while wearing masks.
The state will also have new testing and isolation protocols that will come in and will be different for close contacts and critical workers.
Positive cases will have to isolate for seven days, rather than 14 days, and no test will be required after seven days if symptoms are gone.
“Everyone has seen what has happened on the east coast for the past two months; we saw the chaos, uncertainty and confusion when Omicron surged around the nation,” Mr McGowan said.
“We have the opportunity to watch and learn and strike the right balance.”
