South Australian Premier Steven Marshall has announced the state will enter a snap seven-day lockdown from 6pm Tuesday night.
The Premier announced on Tuesday morning that the state would enter Level 5 restrictions after recording a fifth positive case linked to The Greek on Halifax.
“We have confirmation that this is the Delta variant that we’re dealing with in South Australia and for those reasons we’re extremely concerned about developments this morning,” said Marshall.
“For these reasons and for the fact that we know that this is moving quickly we have no alternative but to impose some fairly heavy immediate restrictions to take effect from 6pm tonight as South Australia moves into lockdown.”
There will now be just five reasons why people can leave their home from 6pm tonight:
- Care and compassion reasons such as taking care of a loved one
- Essential work
- Purchase of essential goods
- Medical reasons including vaccination and testing
- Exercise limited to two people from the same household
Premier Marshall said the state has “just one chance to get this right”.
The lockdown will see the closure of all non-essential retail as well as pubs, restaurants, cafes, and food courts.
Supermarkets, convenience stores, and petrol stations are deemed essential and will continue to trade, with one person per household per day able to go out to purchase essential goods.
“This is moving very quickly; we first got a positive confirmation at 2.30am yesterday and we’re moving as quickly as we can to slow and stop the spread of this particular cluster.
“If we let this run too much longer, we could be in an extended lockdown situation in South Australia.”