Alice Springs, Australian town 800 miles from nearest town, locks down after positive coronavirus case | World news
One of the most remote cities in the world has been quarantined due to possible exposure to the coronavirus.
Alice Springs is approximately 800 miles from the nearest town of Australia – Darwin or Adelaide – and is located almost exactly in the center of the island mainland.
Roughly half of Australia’s population is now subject to stay-at-home orders, as the country seeks to maintain the prevalence of coronavirus at least.
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Fewer than 30,000 people live in Alice Springs, but it is also a hub for remote industry in the Australian outback, such as mining, as well as for neighboring indigenous people.
Now everyone in town has learned that he has to stay home for three days – only allowed to leave to eat, heal himself, exercise, work and take care of others.
It comes after a man who traveled through Alice Springs airport later tested positive for the coronavirus.
The man arrived on a charter flight from a remote gold mine on Friday, spent seven hours in the terminal, and then traveled to Adelaide on the country’s south coast.
Speaking on Wednesday morning local time, Northern Territory Chief Minister Michael Gunner said: “On Saturday June 26, after his return to Adelaide, he obtained a COVID test. This result was not positive.
“However, he has since developed symptoms during his isolation in Adelaide and four of his five household contacts have now tested positive.”
The man then tested positive.
Mr Gunner said: “He’s unlikely to have been very contagious while at Alice Springs airport. But, like all other decisions, we’re not going to take a kick out of it.
“We will operate assuming he has COVID-19 and we will operate assuming he was contagious while in the territory.”
And to make matters worse, a mining worker at the same site who flew straight from the pit in Brisbane on Friday also tested positive for COVID.
The Northern Territories, the state in which Alice Springs is located, currently has six active cases of the virus.
Alice Springs serves as a hub for remote areas of the Australian outback
Australia has managed to avert large outbreaks of COVID, with just 30,560 cases and 910 deaths since the start of the pandemic.
However, with Johns Hopkins University reporting that less than 6% of Australia’s population is fully vaccinated, there are concerns about the speed at which the country can get vaccinated.