Australia is to use a little-known biosecurity law to restrict the movements of people suspected of having been infected with COVID-19, Australian Attorney General Christian Porter said yesterday.
Australia on Monday confirmed the first community transmission of the coronavirus after a doctor contracted it.
State health officials have said that the doctor had not traveled overseas in months and had not treated any of the other confirmed cases.
Photo: Adam Spence via Reuters
Amid fears of a widespread outbreak, Porter said that the government would expand the use of a rarely used law that would either designate some places as out of bounds or place the patient in home detention.
“Under the Biosecurity Act, you could have the prevention of movement from persons in and out of particular places,” Porter told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
“You might have a major sporting event where people would be in very, very close proximity to each other and ... it might be determined that the risk of transmission at a venue like that was too high,” he added.
The law, enacted in 2015, has rarely been used outside of Australia’s agricultural sector.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison last week said that a pandemic was likely, and that Australia has moved to try and prevent the virus from reaching its shores.
Since Feb. 1, Australia has stopped any foreigner from entering directly from China, where the virus originated.
China is Australia’s largest trading partner and the move has prevented thousands of students and tourists from entering Australia.
Some Chinese students have traveled to a third country for two weeks, the presumed incubation period for the coronavirus, which satisfies Australia’s quarantine restrictions.
However, authorities yesterday confirmed that one such student, a 20-year old Chinese man, has been diagnosed with the coronavirus. The unidentified man spent two weeks in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, before traveling to Australia.
Australia now has 38 cases of coronavirus after New South Wales confirmed four more.
Australia has had one death, a 78-year-old man who was a former passenger on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which was quarantined off Japan.
Keen to temper fears, Morrison urged Australians to remain calm as some rushed to shops to stock up on supplies, including canned foods and toilet paper, in case of a pandemic or restrictions on movement.
Morrison said that he has spoken with Australia’s two largest retailers, Coles and Woolworths.
“They would send the same message I am sending you today. It is important that people just go about their business and their normal processes in a calm manner,” Morrison told reporters in Canberra.
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