WA premier: No wedding and athletic meets in pandemic

Western Australia has reported no new community cases of coronavirus on day two of a snap lockdown for Perth and the Peel region, as the premier, Mark McGowan, blamed the federal government for allowing too many Australians to travel overseas to attend “weddings” and “athletics meets” during the pandemic.

/Premier Mark McGowan

“I don’t get why that should be allowed,” the premier said on Sunday.

McGowan announced there had been no new locally acquired cases but said there was one additional case in hotel quarantine. They were a “returning resident who has travelled back from India”.

Earlier on Sunday morning, the defence minister, Peter Dutton, said the WA government had made a “mistake” by using the Mercure Perth hotel where the latest outbreak originated.

/ Australian Defence Minister Peter Dutton 

Dutton told the ABC’s Insiders program the hotel had previously been identified as being unsuitable but the state had other options available and the commonwealth wouldn’t be opening up military bases to house returned travellers as McGowan had suggested.

McGowan blamed the federal government for allowing Australians to travel out of the country to “Covid-infected countries”.

It’s been reported the man who was the first case of the latest cluster had travelled to India for a wedding and returned to quarantine at the Mercure Perth. His partner subsequently tested positive as did a 54-year-old Victorian man who had been staying in an adjacent room at the hotel.

McGowan on Sunday said some Australians had been allowed to go overseas “to a wedding or an athletics meet or a funeral”.

The premier said that the federal government had agreed to halve the state’s arrival cap for the next month after he declared the current rate of 1,025 returning travellers per week was “not sustainable”.

The state conducted 11,859 tests in the past 24 hours and vaccinated 316 people on Saturday. McGowan said that there were a total of 359 close and casual contacts of the confirmed cases.

Of the 303 close contacts, 73 people have returned negative results. Of the 56 casual contacts, 13 had returned a negative result.

/Mercure Perth hotel