West Australian Premier Mark McGowan has made a grim prediction about how Covid-19 will impact the school year.
About 400 children are quarantining after two teachers and two students at three Perth schools contracted Covid-19 in the first week of term 1 — and the Premier has warned more infections are likely.
Western Australia recorded 19 new local cases and 10 related to travel overnight, including three mystery infections. Three of the new local cases were infectious in the community.
It comes after a year 12 pupil at Harrisdale Senior High School and a year 11 student at Corpus Christi College became infected with the virus on Wednesday.
Late on Wednesday, it was also revealed a second teacher at Winterfold Primary School had been diagnosed with coronavirus, forcing a year 4 class into isolation.
Premier Mark McGowan said it was something WA was going to have to get used to.
“Unfortunately, this is going to increase in the future but that’s the reality,” he told ABC radio on Thursday.
“Over time, the rules will change … we’ll eventually move to seven-day quarantining and in certain circumstances people will still be able to go to school and go to work.
“While we get vaccinations up, caution is the order of the day.”
Asked when the quarantine period for close contacts would be slashed from 14 to seven days, Mr McGowan did not give a daily caseload threshold but said: “I don’t think that will be that far away.”
The Premier noted WA had fared better than other states over the past two years of the pandemic.
Meanwhile, Scott Morrison said on Thursday he believed Mr McGowan had made the right decision to delay reopening the state border.
“Yeah, I think he did. I mean, Omicron, as we learnt over the summer, is a completely different virus,” the Prime Minister told 6PR radio.
“I mean, the things we were doing before don’t work the same way under the Omicron virus, and as a result, you’ve got to reset and you’ve got to rethink the things you were doing.
“In the eastern states … we have changed how close contact rules work because that impacts then on the workforce and how many people you have working in health and aged care and in food distribution centres driving trucks.
“That’s what we were doing over the summer and that had some pretty significant impacts.
“I think that’s the big lesson from the eastern states for the west when they inevitably move … into this Omicron phase – that the lessons from the east coast would be applied.”
WA Police Commissioner Chris Dawson said he was hopeful the majority of his officers would soon be able to return to regular policing rather than duties such as meeting passengers arriving at the airport.
“My aspiration would be that police stick to policing, but we have an important role … my role is also to co-ordinate state emergencies and it’s still a state emergency,” he told 6PR radio on Thursday.
“My aspiration (is) … let’s actually move on. At the moment, we can’t move on … we’re still in a state of emergency.
“Things are progressing. Certainly, Omicron was an absolute game changer in December.
“But one would hope, with all of the vaccination we’ve got, with all of the things that are happening, that this year … hopefully we’ll be able to get out of this.”
Originally published as Mark McGowan’s grim warning for schools as hundreds of students forced into quarantine
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