To make sure you never miss out on your favourite NEW stories, we're happy to send you some reminders

Click 'OK' then 'Allow' to enable notifications

Social Distancing Rules Will Remain In Place In Australia For At Least Another Four Weeks

Social Distancing Rules Will Remain In Place In Australia For At Least Another Four Weeks

Scott Morrison said the number of cases is dropping, however we can't jump the gun

Stewart Perrie

Stewart Perrie

Australia will have at least another four weeks of the current social distancing rules, according to Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

There are more than 6,400 cases of coronavirus in the country and the number of new transmissions has begun to slow.

Mr Morrison said while that news is encouraging, they will keep the social distancing rules of gatherings of no more than two people, in public and in private, for another month.

PA

"National cabinet agreed today we will use the next four weeks, to make sure we can get these in place, and the baseline restrictions that have been set, some weeks ago, will remain in place until we can achieve those three goals," he said.

"And we will be reviewing that in the next four weeks.

"A positive thing to say is we have often found ourselves, as we have now, in a better place ahead of time, and if we are able to achieve that well and good.

"But we want to be very clear with Australians, the baseline restrictions we have in place at the moment - there are no plans to change those for the next four weeks, in terms of states that have gone beyond the baseline restrictions."

PA

Those three goals Mr Morrison referenced are a more extensive surveillance, system, greater tracing capability than we have currently, and a local response capability.

He added that we shouldn't jump the gun before we know it's safe.

"We remain formally, after receiving advice again, in what we describe as the suppression phase," he said.

"We are not in an eradication mode, nor are we in the other mode where we see herd immunity approach. These are not the approaches we are following in Australia.

"We are not at the Sweden end or the New Zealand and when it comes to how we approach things, our data and information shows that in that phase we are doing relatively very well, especially over countries that are using even more extreme forms of lockdown."

Featured Image Credit: PA

Topics: News, Australia