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Weimar rejected the suggestion, made by Australian federal health minister Greg Hunt this morning, that the decision to delay the easing of restrictions was a sign of no-confidence in the testing and tracing system, which he manages.
Weimar said:
I refute that. If you look at the swiftness and comprehensive nature of what we are dealing with, and I think it is right that when we are about to make a momentous decision to ease restrictions, that we have to have confidence that we do not have any active unknown cases in our community.
When I was asked a question, is there value in seeing more evidence and do you understand every dynamic of the outbreak, my advice was we need at least one more day to make sure we have attracted down so we have another big day ahead of us today and I want to see the results from today. They will come out through the day tomorrow and that is what I have asked for.
Weimar said there were five public health teams targeting the close contacts of known cases and of the East Preston Islamic College and Croxton specialist school communities. Those teams are knocking on the doors of known contacts and encouraging them to get a test. People who refuse to get a test have been ordered to quarantine for longer.
We’ll be asking to test them and the people they with because they are most directly associated with the cases we know about. And that is how we identified three or four of the cases we saw yesterday through the close contact group.
We are very interested in the close contacts because we want to establish if there are any positive cases in that group because they are the ones most likely to, if we’re going to find any more cases, that is the area where we are most likely to find them. The purpose of the wider community testing approach ... [is] we want to understand if there are any other index cases out there or any other links that have not been established. And that is why the wider test program is so important.
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