Coronavirus sparks cancellation of Anzac Day march in SA, but uncertainty remains for schools

Photo: The main Anzac march in Adelaide has been cancelled. (ABC News: Dean Faulkner) South Australia is now in step with other states over Anzac Day arrangements, with the main march and memorial service in Adelaide cancelled because of coronavirus concerns.

• 
  

The state's RSL branch said the "decision wasn't taken lightly", but follows similar moves in NSW, Queensland, Victoria, Tasmania and Western Australia.
Adelaide's dawn service is currently expected to proceed, but it will not be open to the general public and the RSL said it was still working out live streaming arrangements.
However it said plans could change in line with government advice.
The televised march through Adelaide and the service at the Cross of Sacrifice, as well as a youth vigil the night before, will not go ahead.
"They've all been cancelled because they're predominantly public events," RSL SA chief executive David Grenvold said.
"This is one of the most significant days on the Australian calendar, hence the reservations around cancelling this.
"Public safety's obviously paramount. The cohort that attend these — there are some vulnerable members of the community in there, so we've got to do the right thing by them."Mr Grenvold said the decision had been made after consultation with the SA Government.
The RSL said individual sub-branches could hold their own services, which would be limited to members only.
"Some agree with the measures, some think it's a little bit over the top. We'll let individuals form their own opinions," Mr Grenvold said.

SA Health sticks by plan to keep schools open

The number of cases in South Australia yesterday jumped by 50 per cent from 20 to 30, including a teacher at Unley High School and a student at Scotch College.
Both schools will remain closed today.
"[Unley High] will not be operational again until public health officials indicate that it is safe to do so," the Department for Education said.

Photo: Drive-through coronavirus testing has started in SA. (ABC News: Haidarr Jones)

Federal and state authorities are currently sticking by advice to keep schools open.
"It's [a question] on everyone's minds, not only in the state but also the national committees who are looking at this very carefully," SA Health acting chief medical officer Michael Cusack told ABC Radio Adelaide.
Dr Cusack said SA Health was currently "advocating schools to stay open and advocating for parents to send their children to school".
"The information we have from the largest review of COVID-19, which has taken place in China, was that although children undoubtedly will get the infection, they did not find evidence of that infection occurring inside the schools," he said.

"It wasn't the case that children were infecting each other at school. It was much more the case they were getting the infection in their own families.

"From the public health perspective, if we close our schools then obviously the children will need to be cared for and pretty commonly that'll be with grandparents and older relatives.
"If children have the disease, we're exposing perhaps the more vulnerable members of our population to COVID-19."
Dr Cusack said current evidence suggested that anyone who had contracted coronavirus could not then get it again in the short term.
"Based on what we're seeing [about] people's antibody levels after they've had an infection and the way that they rise, we certainly don't think they can get infected again … in the space of two or three months," he said.
"Clearly as we learn more about the virus and as time goes by, we'll be able to give a better sense of whether you can become infected many months down the line."

Join Geezgo for free. Use Geezgo's end-to-end encrypted Chat with your Closenets (friends, relatives, colleague etc) in personalized ways.>>