'Cause for concern': Engineer among 20 COVID cases linked to inbound WA flight

Three new cases of coronavirus have been confirmed in Western Australia, with one still active.

Health Minister Roger Cook says two are historical cases related to cruise ships while the third is a 43-year-old Romanian technical engineer who flew in on an Emirates flight as part of a maritime crew swap-over.

Cook says the man is the 20th case identified from a July 1 flight from Dubai.

“It does give you some cause for concern about what happened on that particular flight,” he told reporters.

“What I’m comforted by is the strong quarantining arrangements we have for people coming in on international flights, so I’m not worried about the public health risk.”

‘Hard’ border

He said the importance of the state’s “hard” border was highlighted by a 45-year-old West Australian man who flew in from Victoria and was one of Friday’s two confirmed cases, combined with a Victorian fly-in fly-out worker who allegedly flaunted quarantine rules and flew directly to a Pilbara mine site earlier this month.

WA is now immediately testing the few workers granted an exemption to travel to the state from NSW and Victoria, as soon as they land.

And from 11.59pm on Sunday, the criteria for exemptions for people from NSW is being tightened to match those for Victoria.

Only certain senior government officials, certain active military personnel, a federal MP or their staff, people carrying out functions under commonwealth laws, anyone requested by the chief health officer and transport, freight and logistics workers will be allowed to enter WA.

Cook said the state government understood the measures were inconvenient and distressing for some West Australians who wanted to return home but could not.

“We understand these are tough decisions and we don’t take them lightly,” he said.

“It is judged on a case-by-case basis.

“We understand that these tight arrangements will capture people who would otherwise, you would think, have a reasonable case to enter the state.”

Strict regime

On the FIFO worker, who reportedly tested negative after not honestly answering his employer’s questionnaire, Cook said the resources industry was doing a great job running a strict regime.

“We’ll obviously have to remonstrate and make sure that we don’t have that situation again, particularly with this worker,” he said.

“But obviously the fact that he was caught and we were able to intercept him before he became a danger to any of his colleagues is a testament to the systems that we have in place.”

Reiterating it was inevitable WA would experience a second wave, Cook said he was comfortable with 30,000 spectators attending the AFL western derby on Sunday as there was room for distancing.