Restrictions around dancing and stand-up drinking in licensed venues are set to ease in South Australia despite the changes cutting across health advice.
Following a transition committee meeting on Tuesday morning, Police Commissioner Grant Stevens announced it had been decided dancing could return at private functions, including weddings, where attendance limits are set at 150 people.
The number of people allowed on the dancefloor will also be restricted to 50.
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Stand-up consumption in outdoor areas of licensed premises including pubs and beer gardens will also be permitted.
The changes will come into effect from 12.01am on Thursday morning.
Stevens said the changes went against advice from Chief Public Health Officer Nicola Spurrier but he believed they balanced the risks with the level of frustration within the community and the desire to ease coronavirus measures.
“It’s about managing the balancing the risk. The reality is, we’ve done exceptionally well in South Australia,” he told reporters.
“If we do have concerns in relation to seeding from other places into South Australia, these things that we’re announcing now are the first things that will come off the table.
“We are at a point where it is very difficult to find concessions that we can make without substantially increasing risk.”
South Australia will also scrap travel restrictions on people coming from the greater Brisbane area from Saturday.
They will no longer need to have a coronavirus test on arrival but must still fill in a cross-border application.
Possible false-positive
Five people have been placed in quarantine in South Australia after a man travelled to NSW last week and returned a weak positive test result for COVID-19.
Spurrier said the person had since returned two negative tests suggesting the first result may have been a false positive.
However, she said out of an abundance of caution, the five close contacts would isolate for 14 days.
They have all returned negative results with SA posting no new virus cases on Monday.
Spurrier said it was possible the man who travelled to NSW had previously come into contact with COVID-19 positive truck drivers who recently travelled into SA.
"‘We’re not going to have a freedom day...’"
Premier Steven Marshall on Monday said there will be no “freedom day” in South Australia when vaccine targets are reached, with efforts continuing to try to keep COVID-19 out of the state.
The premier says while SA has signed up to the national roadmap for allowing border measures and lockdown rules to ease, some level of local restrictions will remain in force to keep people safe.
“We will have to keep some public health social measures in place,” he said, “we’re not going to have a freedom day where the borders are open and restrictions are removed at the same time.
“This is still a very dangerous pandemic. We want to ensure we maintain our good management of the disease.”
- With AAP