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Chief Health Officer Dr Andy Robertson has confirmed Western Australia reached its COVID peak two weeks ago and the state was now past the worst of the Omicron wave.
The peak was on March 29, when 9754 cases were recorded. The total number of active COVID cases in the state peaked on April 1 at 54,064. There are currently 40,539 active cases, with WA Health reporting 8144 new cases on Thursday.
WA Chief Health Officer Andrew Robertson.Credit:Matt Jelonek / Getty
Speaking to ABC Radio Perth on Thursday morning after changes to the state’s close contact isolation rules came into effect, Robertson said WA had reached the stage where the rules were significantly impacting on people’s ability to go to work and school.
“The risk had, as we’d got over the peak, dropped down and we felt that this was the appropriate time to move to that [new] close contact definition,” he said.
“There may be some additional cases that present, but it does allow a lot more people who are asymptomatic to return to work to return to school, and obviously reduces the load on contact tracing for a number of industries and schools.”
Robertson said he believed there would likely only be a small rise in cases as a result of the relaxed rules.
WA Premier Mark McGowan has said hospitalisations and intensive care rates would continue to be monitored. Credit:Peter de Kruijff
“There are still a number of measures that are quite effective at reducing the spread and obviously, the two-square-metre rule is one,” he said.
“We are coming down, but we are still slowly coming out and so there’s still a lot of disease currently circulating in the Perth areas.