Peter Gutwein,Premier
The health, safety and wellbeing of Tasmanians is the Government's number one priority, and we know these past weeks have been tough for everyone as we continue to deal with the challenges of COVID-19.
While some degree of physical distancing is going to be part of our way of life, at least until a vaccine or effective treatment is found, I am hopeful that in coming weeks we will be able to move, in gradual steps, back toward some measure of normality.
In order to begin easing restrictions, we are putting in place four safeguards.
Firstly, expanded testing is one of the crucial precedent conditions and we welcome the critically important partnership between the Australian Government, Minderoo Foundation and private pathology providers, which has successfully secured an additional 10 million COVID-19 test kits and more pathology equipment for use around the country.
Tasmania will use the additional resourcing to ramp up testing capability and expand the testing criteria, particularly as we work to get on top of the current COVID-19 outbreak in the North West of the state.
Secondly, our manual tracing efforts over the past weeks have worked well, particularly in fighting the North West outbreak, but we need help from all Tasmanians to improve our tracing capacity even more.
This includes encouraging as many people as possible to download on their smart phones the Federal Government's COVIDSafe Tracing App, which will be another tool to help us track and treat this virus
Thirdly, we are also putting in place localised rapid response capabilities that could be implemented in regions or industry specific sites if required. This is to enhance current public health capabilities in the response to an outbreak.
Rapid response teams will help trace, track and quarantine the virus wherever our enhanced testing finds it. Teams will be recruited from across the health and public sectors and will be able to be stood up quickly whenever an outbreak occurs.
Finally, we are developing COVID-19 Safe Plans, which will help make our workplaces, public spaces and meeting places as safe as they can be. As restrictions ease, these plans will help to ensure there are rules and policies in place so that they can operate safely, helping to limit the risk of coronavirus infection to staff and customers.
With these safeguards in place, we can gradually ease the current restrictions as much as we can, without risking a disastrous outbreak of the virus this winter.
If we put in place the safeguards and work together to recover gradually and responsibly, we will get our way of life back and we will rebuild a stronger Tasmania.
