South Australia is set to open its border with New South Wales from midnight on Wednesday, following an extended closure due to the bastard coronavirus.
Speaking in Adelaide this morning, SA Premier Steven Marshall announced the border will fling open if NSW records no further community transmissions until midnight tonight.
NSW today counted two new cases of coronavirus. However, both were found in the state’s hotel quarantine system.
This also happens to be NSW’s first day in bloody yonks without any cases caused by community transmission. Not bad.
Two new cases of COVID-19 were diagnosed in the 24 hours to 8pm last night, bringing the total number of cases in NSW to 4,017.
Both are returned overseas travellers in hotel quarantine. pic.twitter.com/LjYTesBF5z
— NSW Health (@NSWHealth) September 22, 2020
“This will be massive relief for people dislocated from family, friends and business opportunities,” Marshall said.
“We know this has been a massive burden on the business community, families and individuals but we did this to keep people safe.”
As it stands, most travellers from NSW are required to self-quarantine for fourteen days once crossing into SA, and cop COVID-19 tests on the day of their arrival – and again on their twelfth day in the state.
NSW residents who enter SA before midnight on Wednesday are still required to take those steps, too.
The SA Government states travellers from the ACT, NT, QLD, TAS and WA and permitted to enter “directly without restriction.”
No such luck for Victoria, though. Checkpoints remain at key roads connecting the states, and only folks deemed ‘Essential Travellers’ are allowed into SA.
(Editor’s note: I, for one, hope the virus fucks off sometime soon, so that I can leave my place in Melbourne to see my family in Adelaide. It’d be nice, I suspect, to see the parents over Christmas without the looming spectre of a pandemic.)
South Australia’s last confirmed coronavirus case, a returned traveller, was recorded on September 11.
