LAURA TINGLE:
Professor Paul Kelly is Acting Chief Medical Officer. I spoke to him about the South Australian outbreak a short time ago.
LAURA TINGLE:
Professor Paul Kelly, the review of the national contact tracing system found that all states and territories now have strong contact tracing and outbreak management systems in place. Does that mean that we should be confident that this outbreak in South Australia should be much more easily contained than the one in Victoria?
PAUL KELLY:
Absolutely, Laura. We’ve had a very good review done by the Chief Scientist, Professor Alan Finkel, and his team that reported to National Cabinet on Friday. So they found that, universally in every state, really good systems, really well [audio skip] ready for exactly this sort of event we're seeing in Adelaide right now. So, so yes, I'm confident that we have the systems in place to deal with this outbreak.
LAURA TINGLE:
Well, Finkel also emphasised the importance of confidence in the system for both state leaders and the public. Does the fact that so many states have responded today by either closing borders or imposing travel restrictions suggest we aren't quite there yet?
PAUL KELLY:
Well, as we've- as I've said many times when I've been asked this, the issue of domestic borders is one for the states themselves to decide. Look, the South Australians are very confident in their systems right now, I've spoken several times over the last 24 hours to Nicola Spurrier, the Chief Public Health Officer there and member of the AHPPC, and I'm very impressed with the way that she's been handling this. They've done a lot of testing, very quickly got on top of this cluster, which is essentially a large family group plus a couple of extra guards in one of the quarantine hotels. They've found the source, and they're really dealing with all of that contact tracing, isolation and further testing very well.
LAURA TINGLE:
So, do the suggestions this infection came out of a quarantine hotel also suggest there does need to be further work done on lifting cleaning standards in these facilities. And what processes are in place to monitor how they are cleaned?
PAUL KELLY:
I know that the South Australian quarantine hotels did have extra training just in the last week in relation to infection control. But the reality is there's 54 million cases in the world, we have a raging global pandemic in many countries. We have people coming back to Australia, Australians are being welcomed back home which, you know, which is their right, and we're doing everything we can to get people back by Christmas. And this is a very infectious virus, so even with the very best infection control, even with the very best cleaning and so forth, there still is that risk. And the most important thing right now is, not so much that it's happened, but the response which has been so rapid and so comprehensive in South Australia really shows to me that they're on top of their game. And that response to outbreaks is the key as we go forward with this virus in Australia.
LAURA TINGLE:
Professor Kelly, thank you so much for your time tonight.
PAUL KELLY:
You're welcome, Laura.
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