Mr McGowan said WA’s vulnerability to uncontrollable transmission was much greater than Victoria, which still had some restrictions in place from its outbreaks last year.

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“We were more vulnerable than anywhere else, simply because we were freer more relaxed, more open community,” he said.

“We hadn’t had any COVID for 10 months which was virtually a world record so therefore we had to take stronger action.

“They’ve already had rules in place that have been in place for a long period of time, which are much, much stronger than restrictions than Western Australia had in place.”

Western Australia will also look to beef up its hotel quarantine system under a range of measures including mandatory use of goggles by hotel staff.

The state will consider a Victorian proposal to conduct saliva testing of workers between shifts by next week following fierce criticism from the Australian Medical Association WA over policies that did not require hotel quarantine security guards to wear masks.

It was unclear how this regime would differ from the daily saliva testing regime introduced in the state last Friday.

Health Minister Roger Cook said every state was reassessing their quarantine hotel protocols and the matter of PPE and more testing was being discussed at the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee meeting today.

“As part of our continuous improvement process today all hotel quarantine workers in high risk areas in addition to wearing obviously wearing masks will also be required to have eye protection equipment,” he said.

“Other measures we’re looking to introduce shortly is to have hotel quarantine workers have a saliva test between shifts. This is a proposal put up by the by the Victorian government we agree with it.”