Western Australia has recorded no new cases of COVID-19 overnight as the state nears the end of its four-day “circuit-breaker” lockdown.
Premier Mark McGowan described the results as “amazingly encouraging news”.
The state has so far identified 360 close contacts of which 295 have tested negative.
Another 2503 people have been identified as casual contacts.
So far, 1173 of those have tested negative.
Today’s case update comes after the state recorded one new community infection yesterday.
High risk for remote communities
Mr McGowan slammed tourists going out of the Perth and Peel regions into remote Aboriginal communities.
“The last thing we want is this deadly virus getting out in our regional and remote communities,” he said.
“No one wants a COVID outbreak in a remote Aboriginal community.”
Since road checkpoints were set up around Perth, 262 cars have been turned around.
Record vaccination numbers
A record number of people were vaccinated in Western Australia yesterday.
Health Minister Roger Cook touted the 12,777 vaccines given out.
About 720,000 people have at least received their first dose in Western Australia.
“Let’s keep the momentum going,” Mr Cook said.
Prison vaccination scheme in WA
Mr McGowan defended a plan to vaccinate prisoners as quickly as possible.
He said an outbreak would mean infected prisoners would need to enter hospitals under police guard.
“They’re in close proximity and obviously they can’t escape that – or hopefully they can’t escape that,” he said.
“This is just a practical manoeuvre.”
Mr Cook said the younger prisoners would be getting the Pfizer vaccine.
“If COVID were to enter a prison, it would go through that prison like wildfire,” he said.
“We want to make sure we don’t have big outbreaks among our prison population.”
