Skip to main content
Home
  • The Legislative Assembly meets on 16/04/2024 (01:00 PM)
    Assembly sit 16/04/2024
  • The Legislative Council meets on 16/04/2024 (01:00 PM)
    Council sit 16/04/2024
  • The Public Administration meets on 08/04/2024 (10:00 AM)
    Committee meet 08/04/2024

Parliamentary Questions


Question Without Notice No. 334 asked in the Legislative Assembly on 4 August 2021 by Ms M.J. Davies

Parliament: 41 Session: 1

CORONAVIRUS — COMMUNITY CASE

334. Ms M.J. DAVIES to the Premier:

Noting that the Premier and the Minister for Health have just returned from providing a press conference, perhaps the Premier would like to update the house on the matters that he has just advised the state's media of.

Mr M. McGOWAN replied:

I thank the Leader of the Opposition for the question. Earlier today, the Minister for Health and I were informed of a potential COVID-positive person who has been in Western Australia over recent weeks. The gentleman is a FIFO worker who flew from Perth to the Cloudbreak mine on 20 July. He was at the airport at the same time as the person who came from Queensland and had been let out of hotel quarantine after a negative test. We do not know whether they were in touch or whether they were in proximity, but they were both at the airport at the same time. The most plausible explanation for the Western Australian case is that he was at the airport at the same time as the Queensland person. The Queensland person was subsequently found to be positive when he returned to Queensland and was in a youth hostel, as members might recall, when he was unwell and got tested and he was still positive, having been in hotel quarantine and earlier being cleared.

It is a bizarre situation that occurred. Our gentleman was at the airport at the same time. He flew to Cloudbreak and he was there for a week. He was at the airport on 20 and 27 July. On 20 July, he was at terminals 3 and 4 between 4.00 and 7.00 am and on 27 July, he was at terminals 3 and 4 between 4.00 and 6.00 am. From 27 July until now, he has been in the community, at this point in time, in the Greenwood area and the Fremantle area, as people do. As a young man, he has visited a few pubs and the like. He has been out in the community. We will publish everywhere he has been as best we can work out through our contact tracing teams as soon as we can. Our request is that people who were at the airport at those times go and get tested and isolate pending a negative result. If they were at any of the exposure sites, when they are published, they need to go and get tested and isolate pending a negative result. Fortescue Metals Group is currently going through a process with its workforce, which I encourage it to do expeditiously, to test its workforce as well. That is an ongoing process.

Obviously, we are ramping up our testing facilities around Perth to get as many people tested as possible. If you are unwell, get tested. If you have been to any of the exposure sites, get tested. The FIFO worker's partner has returned a negative result, but she will isolate for 14 days. Of his three closest colleagues, one has returned a negative result and the results of tests on the others are pending.

That is as much as we know at this point. Obviously, it demonstrates that COVID is with us. It is out there around the world. We are not immune to it coming in. We do our best to deal with it if it does. What has occurred was totally unpredicted and unforeseen. I urge all Western Australians to please go and get vaccinated.