And you wonder why borders will take a long time to open

Same here in WA - today we also had our first case in ages but its come from a live export ship that docked at Fremantle - there's a crew of 48 and 7 of them were sick and 6 tested positive so off to hotel isolation for them. The rest that are apparently "not sick" are staying on board - oh dear, here we go again...

It's important to keep our borders closed but this is hard to keep international exports/imports. Same with interstate transport of goods.

In WA the sheep carrier Al Kuwait has been docked in Fremantle for 3 days with positive covid 19 cases.
they must be contained onboard.
What about all the other overseas ships off Hedland, (approx 50 ships) and 20 off Point Samson, Mackay and Hay Point, (40 ships), Newcastle (30 ships) who is checking that all the overseas crews stay onboard?

The Bass Strait ferry crews are confined to the ship for their complete swing.

Still Staying at Home

Noting that the woman is not from Victoria but is from overseas and her first port of landing back in Australia just happened to be Melbourne and went straight into isolation in a hotel - how Covid 19 was not picked up as part of the approval process to travel to SA is not clear.

If SA had an appropriate first airport of call she would have flown direct to Adelaide rather than Melbourne. Same with others interstaters coming back home from overseas but having to transit via Melbourne or Sydney and being picked up there - maybe Victoria and NSW should have stopped people from other States returning from overseas via their international airports.

I live in Mackay & work at Haypoint, there were procedures & checks put into place well before things got serious in oz, the ship’s are not to berth before 2 weeks at anchor, report their last ports of call & are required to report ANY illnesses on board, the crew are not given shore leave. I can only guess that the sheep carrier was given permission to berth by the authorities.

It is sooo easy to say the old ”if it saves only 1 life then it is worth it” that you hear from pollies.
But how many livelihoods are totally stuffed and how many mental health cases arise and lead to suicide.
It is so easy to make statements as these, When not faced with the full picture.

For the moment travel within the state seems the wisest move, not interstate without rigorous checking. Here in little Beijing, Dan controlled us all but knowingly allowed his meat worker mate to hide Covid workers until it all blew up out of control. Until the same is applied to all persons by the premier's we will continue to have problems.

I am still wondering what a Women is? and where is the compassionate ground. Isn't it "on compassionate grounds? A permission for an action, not an area of land.

mmmm ...................
The ACT has open borders and has the second longest # of days without an infection, ACT 22, the NT 24. OK the ACT only has a population of 457 000 compared to states
My region (New England North West NSW) has open borders (not that it's too popular in winter) and hasn't had an infection is 6 + weeks.
My SIL can travel down from Brisbane to North Coast NSW to see her mother for a weekend and travel back to Brisbane without a problem, yet NSW persons can't set foot inside Qld without issues.

All very consistent and logical

Mark

Why will borders take a long time to open?

That's an easy one. Here we go.

The Australian Federal Government established a non-political Australian Health Protection Principal Committee (AHPPC) to provide advise that shaped government policy in respect to COVID-19. This committee is made up of the Chief Medical Officers of the Federal and State Governments, and their respective deputy CMOs

The execution of this advise would occur through the National Cabinet, made up of the PM, State Premiers, and Chief Ministers.

The AHPPC made a series of recommendations about isolation, international border movements, quarantine, and ICU beds etc. The AHPPC did not recommend the closure of State borders because it was considered to be both ineffective, and inconsistent with the "flattening the curve" strategy.

Then some State CMOs, not all but some, returned to their home States and recommended a different strategy - an "elimination" strategy -radically different to the "flatten the curve" strategy they agreed with the Federal body on which they sat. Their respective State Premiers and Chief Ministers, not all but some, accepted their local CMO's advice, even though they had already agreed a different position in National Cabinet.

So there we have it: some State borders will take a long time to open because some States have decided to adopt a strategy different to that agreed by their representatives on the AHPPC and the National Cabinet.

How typically Australian! :-)

HI
Being the states are all running there own shows ,some decisions warranted many not , I`m glad they`re not running the roads dept ,oh dam almost forgot . Basically so many states all pulling in different directions similar to how road rules and licensing is handled!!

This world wide epidemic started with just 1 infected human.
People forget very quickly, thats the only reason political parties bounce back.
Learn from other countries mistakes.
Open the borders before there is a vaccine and Australia will be digging mass graves too.

"Here we are all doing everything right here in South Australia"

Easy to write that when your leaving it up to other states to take on your responsibilities as usual.

To to be clear, Victoria has had to take on SA's responsibilities as we have no choice but to accept a person coming into Australia who may have COVID as the SA goverment and federal goverment has allowed her to fly. They then go into quarantine in VIC for a week and then fly to SA. As SA let her into the country shouldn't your state be responsible for the traveler?

We don't know exactly what happened, the person is in Vic and may have had no temperature, she wants to get to SA so when asked is she experiencing any systems she says no. She gets to SA and decides to tell the truth. It then is Victoria that is at fault. She may well have been tested in Vic for COD and tested negative, the tests aren't all that accurate for COVID in the early stages, if the patient is not truthful which they may have not have been as they want to get to SA it makers it even more difficult.

To me this sounds more like a case of the SA goverment trying to shift the blame for letting her fly into the country to start with, if she had been able to fly into Adelaide you would have still ended up with her.

What I would like to know is why do we in Vic have to allow these people to land here, if there not from Vic we should be able to refuse them? Why aren't they doing 2 weeks isolation overseas before flying? The greater majority of our cases are now people flying into country who may be going to other states, how about you other states take responsibility for your residents and send a sealed bus from SA for example and pick them up from the airport instead of leaving Vic to deal with your problem and then complaining when it goes wrong?

When SA closed the borders maybe Vic should have turned off the power to SA:)

If there is one tragic death from a tourist on a remote 4wd track, we should close that track to everybody because "if we can save just one life it is worth it" says the politician

And if one person falls from the Wallaman Falls lookout then the track should be closed?

I know the above is different to the argument of closing borders, but there are parallels, the main one being that there are millions of people who's livelyhoods depend on movement of people, and to deny them because of this lousy example of the OP is tragic, as more people will start to suffer the ultimate consequence indirectly.

The problem is not NSW and Victoria, the problem in Sydney and Melbourne and the indoor lifestyle they live.

Any idiot that thinks our Governments haven’t been doing the right thing or have overreacted, think of this,

Australia deaths 102
USA deaths 100,000 (almost)
Pro rata for population Australia Should be 7950 deaths!

Think about it!

Should we react to one death, answer that if you think it might be your wife, son, daughter, mother or father!

Stephen you are fake news... SA govt is at fault and they have acknowledged it.
I agree with the border closures .

Stephen,

I think you have been sucked in by the media hype.

Sure, one case sneaked into South Australia. But Truck drivers, miners, airline crew, etc come in and out every day without any testing.

Covid will be with us for years, possibly forever, are you proposing that the borders stay shut for years? I doubt it, in fact, I'd be willing to make a bet that the SA government and even proud South Australians like yourself will be promoting the virtues of SA, even begging and spending millions on tourism campaigns within a few weeks while the virus is still present in our society.

Actually I am getting annoyed at ( other ) communities who had "go away" protests and signs and even slashing tyres of visitors, now begging for tourists to visit their friendly little towns. What a selfish, small-minded attitude and any place that said stay away was heard clearly by me. I'll do that. Screw them.

The whole state's response to this has been appalling and small thinking. Australia has done a great job in general but the states leave a lot to be desired

If that person wasn't allowed into SA via Victoria, then none of this would have happened. It's not a state border issue, in this case SA triggered an international border issue. And you are advocating that a new case caused by SA incompetence be forced to stay in Vic despite every protocol and rule

And the media loves to flair up the differences in the various responses. Australia is in it together.

I for one would like an investigation into the reporting of Coronavirus deaths.

For instance how many people died purely from the virus, rather than those who died with the virus.

eg I might have an abscess on my leg but die following a heart attack. It seems to me that the abscess could be recorded as the cause of death if all of a sudden abscess's were regarded as evil?

Stephen.
Why has SA chief health officer now apologised to Victoria after the Covid case and emails you speak of.?

Thousands of people cross the nsw/qld border everyday
I'm really surprised that there have been no outbreaks (that we know of) from those crossing.
The police just wave everyone thru displaying the “A” entry pass. I know a bloke who pasted a blank piece of A4 paper in his windscreen as a test. He was just waved thru

Remember, anyone will be allowed to enter as long as they have the “A” pass displayed. No checks are made of those applying for the pass. You just complete the form and are given the A pass
There are ABSOLUTELY NO CHECKS MADE ON THOSE PASSING THRU THE CHECKPOINT. NONE

Personally I can understand why some states closed their borders, I thought Vic should have done the same but I can see it was a bit impractical.

The reality is though how long can the borders remain closed, you may think it is a very good idea at the moment but wait until the crunch comes. The goverment has to repay the huge amount of money they are currently borrowing, they have warned the hit is to come and it will not be good but people have their heads in the sand as usual. The states and federal governments are going to have huge short falls in their budgets. Many businesses are not going to recover, a lot on present goverment payments, some getting paid more than the were as employees are eventually going to have them cut off and no jobs to go back to.

Reality is in a few months with or without a vaccine states will be begging travelers to visit them and spend money there. They will have little income, they will be cutting services and most likely taxes will need to be increased. As Trump said the cure may well be worse than the disease. If you disagree then what is your theory as to where the money is going to come from to repay the debts the goverment is mounting up, cover the loss of income from failed businesses and then there is China now stopping purchasing Australian products. Don't also forget due to losses in the stock market as world finances crash a lot of retirees have probably opted to stop their pensions from super schemes for the time being, they can't keep this up forever. If they have to start drawing on capital then you may end up with a lot more on the age pension, more drain on the goverment coffers.

It is unlikely a vaccine is going to arrive in the near future so it will most likely be control the spread of the virus until the whole population has been exposed and how long will that take, I read so far around 7000 have been exposed I, if they manage to keep the infection rate the same it will only take around 1666 years for heard immunity to be achieved.

Then there is the question who is going to travel? I'm hesitant to set off even when the borders open, I'm not in a dangerous category group but many have died who weren't. We have been looking at where we might go and presently thinking if we do decide to travel then it will most likely be remote keeping away towns and caravan parks etc, mainly camping remotely. Discussions with friends indicate the same and I suspect a lot with the money and time to travel will be thinking the same. The longer this goes on it will eventually become a case of do you remain indoors for the remainder of your life or throw the dice and see if survive the virus and get back to a normal way of life?

Reality is in a few months time states, businesses and workers who still have a job and want to keep it will be hoping tourism picks up, your problem is then going to be convincing the grey headed nomads that it is safe for them to travel and visit.

The real problem is 'unnecessary' travel and not following the rules , the only borders that need to be SHUT are international , has no one on here ever read the Australian Constitution ....

The state borders should never have been closed in the first place, it was only the international border that needed closure. The state closures have inflicted unnecessary headship and disruption on their citizens for minimal if any gain.
If the current bunch of inept and inexperienced premiers are good at one thing it is knee jerk reactions .
Leaders are required to lead not wander around bleating like timid sheep