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Australia has now recorded 200 coronavirus cases after three more were confirmed in South Australia.
Key points:
- SA's Premier announced the latest three coronavirus cases this morning
- The latest to test positive are two women, aged in their 30s and 80s, and a man in his 50s
- All three had recently been overseas to countries including the US and the UK
SA Premier Steven Marshall made the announcement this morning following an emergency SA Cabinet meeting.
The latest cases include a woman in her 30s who had travelled from the UK and a man in his 50s who had been in the US.
The third new case was a woman in her 80s who had both been overseas and in contact with another confirmed case.
South Australia has recorded a total of 19 cases, including a student at Sacred Heart College who tested positive yesterday.
"Six of the people who have been affected have already passed through this illness and have been discharged from hospital," Mr Marshall said.
"We have 13 people who are currently isolated, most of those within our major hospitals."
Mr Marshall attended yesterday's COAG meeting, along with his interstate counterparts and Prime Minister Scott Morrison, during which it was decided mass gatherings of more than 500 people would be cancelled.
A national cabinet comprising state and federal leaders has also been established to coordinate responses to the spread of COVID-19.
"We're asking people who are unwell not to come to work. We're asking people to adopt and abide by this norm in terms of social distancing," Mr Marshall said.
"We don't want to be using finite resources to test the 'worried well'."
Mr Marshall said Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton — who was later diagnosed with coronavirus — was not at Friday's COAG meeting.
"We certainly haven't received any advice that we are in a cohort that should be tested," Mr Marshall said.
Health authorities seek better access to flight manifests
The nation's chief medical officer, Professor Brendan Murphy, today said he was at Tuesday's Cabinet meeting attended by Mr Dutton, but there was no need to place himself in quarantine.
"No member of Cabinet was in contact with Minister Dutton within 24 hours of him becoming symptomatic, nor was I in fact in contact with him," he said.
The number of cases globally has reached 140,000, and the World Health Organisation this week declared a pandemic.
"We have early evidence of community transmission, mostly in New South Wales but a little bit in other states. We have moved quite early to institute social distancing measures," Professor Murphy said.
"We have made the decision early enough so that we can give people a few days' notice to start on Monday, so we can have an orderly transition."
South Australia's chief public health officer Dr Nicola Spurrier said one "difficulty" had been in speedily accessing flight manifests to notify passengers who had been near those infected.
"We've been working with the other states to try and improve the speed with which we can get the manifests," she said.
"The people we are really wanting to be able to contact very quickly are the people who are sitting two rows ahead and two rows behind and to the side."
Topics: respiratory-diseases, diseases-and-disorders, health, events, schools, epidemics-and-pandemics, epidemiology, states-and-territories, adelaide-5000, sa, australia
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