Premier Steven Marshall has announced a ban on exercise among family groups will be immediately lifted and effective from midnight Saturday the state’s stay at home lockdown will be lifted after it emerged a close contact of the Woodville pizza bar deliberately lied to investigators.
Mr Marshall said he was “fuming” about the lie but said contact tracers “still need breathing space to contact people”.
“We’re back to where we were on Monday with a very dangerous cluster,” he said.
The following restrictions will be relaxed from midnight on Saturday:
- Funerals will have an allowance of 50 people and weddings will return to an allowance of 150 but there will be no dancing or vertical consumption at weddings. Religious ceremonies will be restricted to 100 people.
- Private gatherings will be 50 people. Gatherings in private residences will be restricted to 10 people.
- Seated consumption is required across all venues that provide consumption of food and beverage on premises.
- Personal care providers, that’s hairdressers, beauty therapists, will be required to wear masks and still strongly encouraging patrons of those facilities to wear masks at the same time.
- Good news is that gyms will be able to open at the same time as these restrictions come into place midnight Saturday.
Schools will be returning on Monday morning.
Speaking about the lie told to tracers, Police Commissioner Grant Stevens said:
“We were operating with the assumption this person had gone to the pizza shop, very short exposure, and walked away with having contracted the virus. We now know they are a very close contact with someone who has been confirmed as having COVID. It’s changed the dynamics substantially.
“The lie was the person claimed they had purchased a pizza from the pizza shop where in fact they were working there and had been working there for several shifts. Had this person been truthful with the contact tracing teams, we would not have gone into a six-day lockdown.”
Professor Nicola Spurrier said three new COVID cases have been detected in people already in quarantine.
Two of the new cases are relatives of a security worker at a medi-hotel and the other is an aged-care worker
There are 25 cases linked to the cluster and another 44 suspected. 4,500 people are in quarantine.
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