Premier Mark McGowan has announced a three-day lockdown of the Perth and Peel regions.
Premier Mark McGowan has announced a snap three-day lockdown of the Perth and Peel regions from midnight tonight following confirmation that a Melbourne man who contracted COVID-19 in hotel quarantine was in the community and potentially contagious for five days.
During a press conference this afternoon, Mr McGowan confirmed that Western Australia was updating its health advice amid an evolving situation in which a close contact of the man had since tested positive for the virus.
This morning, Victorian authorities confirmed that the man in his 50s, who had boarded a flight from Perth on April 21, had tested positive for the virus upon landing.
It is understood the man had completed 14 days of quarantine at Mercure Hotel Perth before travelling back to Victoria; a facility at the centre of an outbreak earlier this month.
The man was deemed a close contact of a positive case that had been staying in the room adjacent to him and was urged to complete a test upon arrival by WA health authorities.
Despite returning a negative test result on day 12, he returned a positive test result this morning.
After leaving hotel quarantine on April 17, he stayed with a friend in Kardinya. Mr McGowan confirmed that friend had since tested positive for the virus.
In the days after, he visited a Malaysian restaurant for dinner, Northbridge for dinner, stayed at St Catherine's College at UWA and visited a swimming pool in Perth's southern suburbs.
On April 20, he visited Kings Park and Northbridge before travelling to the airport the following day.
As part of the updated health advice, masks will become mandatory from 6pm this evening.
The news comes just hours after Mr McGowan revealed that genome sequencing had confirmed that a couple who had returned from India had spread the virus to others quarantining on the same floor of the Mercure Hotel Perth earlier this month.
Guests exposed to the virus were moved to a different floor, while others who had left quarantine have been tested and required to self-isolate.
WA health officials intend to investigate the matter once all floors have been vacated.
The state last went into a lockdown on January 31, with a five-day lockdown of the Perth metropolitan, Peel and South West regions and a staged easing of restrictions after a security guard at Four Points by Sheraton contracted the UK strain of the virus from a returned traveller.
That was the first lockdown since 2020, when the state was in a hard lockdown from March 23 until April 28.
More to come.
