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A high school student is among four new people who have tested positive for coronavirus in South Australia.
Key points:
- A Sacred Heart College student has tested positive for coronavirus
- Students who shared classrooms with him will be contacted and the classrooms will be cleaned
- A woman who has no overseas travel history has also tested positive in South Australia
Sacred Heart College's senior campus in Somerton Park will be cleaned over the weekend and students who shared two classrooms with the boy will be put into quarantine.
The boy contracted the virus from one of his parents, who tested positive yesterday, despite not travelling overseas himself.
He is in a stable condition.
Chief public health officer Nicola Spurrier said there was no need to close the Catholic school for "a prolonged time" because the weekend would be enough time to clean the rooms and contact students' families.
Another woman in her 40s who received a positive test yesterday also contracted the virus within Australia — the first such case in South Australia.
She had no recent overseas travel history, but had previously been in Melbourne.
Dr Spurrier said she was considering whether to order the cancellation of mass public gatherings this weekend, including the final weekend of Adelaide Festival and Fringe events.
"The clock is ticking, so I will be looking at all the events that may be on this weekend, there's more than the Fringe, there's other events that are being organised and I need to look at all of them," she said.
SA Health bans work-related travel
The other positive tests recorded today include a man in his 60s and woman in her 50s who travelled to the US, and a man in his 50s who travelled to Europe.
There are now 16 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in South Australia.
Dr Spurrier said South Australia was now moving out of the "containment phase" of coronavirus, with cases of person-to-person transmission beginning to take place.
SA Health has banned work-related international and interstate travel for its own staff.
Dr Spurrier said South Australians had a responsibility to take precautions not to spread the virus, particularly by staying home if sick.
"It is so very important that all of us start to think about social distancing," she said.
Education Minister John Gardner said schools would not be counted as mass gatherings, but school assemblies would be cancelled until further notice.
He said if anyone in a school tested positive, it would be closed for 24 hours.
"The situation essentially is in the event of a positive test, a school will be closed for at least 24 hours to allow public health officials to identify who that student or indeed staff member has been in contact with … to allow appropriate settings to be in place for those people if they need to be isolated or tested and enabling time for the school to be cleaned," Mr Gardner said.
Case at Adelaide submarine hub
Earlier today, Adelaide submarine maintenance facility ASC closed part of its operations after one of its workers tested positive for coronavirus.
The Federal Government-owned company said all employees who had direct contact with the worker were undertaking self-isolation.
ASC has closed the building the person was working in to have it professionally cleaned.
It is understood a significant number of staff affected are either working from home or taking a leave day.
The Osborne facility is used to carry out significant maintenance on the Collins Class submarines.
Topics: infectious-diseases-other, diseases-and-disorders, health, doctors-and-medical-professionals, private-schools, religious-schools, secondary-schools, public-sector, government-and-politics, schools, adelaide-5000, somerton-park-5044, sa
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