He arrived in Darwin on Friday 25 June and was transferred to the Centre for National Resilience on Saturday 26 as high-risk (and had) his first Covid test inside the centre.
[That] returned a negative result but he has since tensed as positive overnight. This says first, more proof that our swift action has kept this virus trapped.
He tested positive inside the Centre for National Resistance, not outside. Second, it’s more proof that with the Delta strain, we cannot rely on the first test to give us comfort, but because this man’s first result was negative, he has been in controlled isolation since the weekend. There’s no reason to believe he was infectious during his very limited time in the community. For this reason, there are no new exposure sites at this time.
I give it this caveat – we are still conducting interviews and information, and also retesting the first test.
At this stage, we have a high level of confidence that he was not infectious in the community and there’s no additional risk to the community, to Alice Springs.
At this stage our contact tracers have identified 69 close contacts who spent time in the cafe at Alice Springs airport on Friday 25 June, and 52 casual contacts. They were all in isolation and the testing has begun.
We will keep the tracing going. It’s good news so far but the next 24 hours is still very important.
We want to see more information and test results. Even more confidence. We will talk with our South Australian colleagues. We continue to believe that while he is highly infectious, it’s unlikely to be while he was in the airport, but as I said yesterday we cannot take any [risks].
The population is too vulnerable. The stakes are too high.
