New Health Measures announced

Mark McGowan has announced a new system of Health measures as the WA hard border comes down.

Earlier today, we announced Western Australia’s full border opening on Thursday, 3 March.

While this will be welcome news for many families, the introduction of quarantine-free travel will naturally mean there will be greater spread of the virus in WA.

At the same time, it is evident that our daily case numbers are accelerating.

This Omicron outbreak effectively started in WA on 2 January, when a traveller from Tasmania arrived with Omicron. More than 6 weeks later, only now are we seeing daily local case numbers in the triple digits.

This is a long time to hold an Omicron outbreak at bay, thanks to so many Western Australians willing to do the right thing.

Unfortunately now, the current size and pace of the outbreak will continue to accelerate, and in order to avoid the worst outcomes that we have seen over east, we will need to introduce some additional public health and social measures.

Introducing these additional measures is not something we want to do, but we know from the eastern states’ experience that applying measures before the peak will help in the long run.

The measures are about trying to strike the right balance – to minimise the impact on businesses and the economy, and to save lives.

These Level One measures are for Perth, Peel, the South West, Great Southern, Wheatbelt and Pilbara regions – and we will expand them to other regions as cases are identified in the community.

Effective 6.00am Monday, all regions in WA will have the indoor mask requirement, and existing proof of vaccination and contact registration requirements.

These are reasonable, sensible public health measures to keep more businesses open, give the public more confidence that they can safely go about their business, while at the same time, manage the rise in infection and reduce the impact on the health system and our hard working doctors and nurses.

More information on Level One public health and social measures can be found at www.wa.gov.au