From the General Manager

IAN HORNE – AHA|SA GENERAL MANAGER

Time for a Plan Out of COVID-19!

Friday 26 February saw changes in the COVID-19 declarations that approved an increased opportunity to allow dancing. That decision was welcomed, but yet again, the implementation is complexed and the decision is lacking any sense of logic.

Hotels and hospitality venues had been allowed to conduct ‘private functions’ since late in December 2020. A private function required an invitation (as opposed to a patron simply turning up on the night), a registration of the persons attending (in addition to the QR scan provisions also designed to record attendees), numbers were limited to 200 and the function must be isolated from the rest of the venue’s activities as best as possible.

Further, if 200 people were invited but only 180 arrived, then the venue could not simply sell additional tickets at the door – ONLY the ‘invited’ up to 200 could attend. A somewhat clumsy process that required planning and significant supervision.

From 26 February, ‘private functions’ are still in place under the same rules as mentioned, but further to that, venues with fewer than 200 people on the premises (but excluding any patrons attending a private function in those numbers), can now allow all 200 to dance.

The ‘less than’ 200 number is the total of patrons on the premises including areas such as restaurants, bistros, gaming rooms, bars and lounges – actual people NOT the maximum capacity as designated on the venue licence.

In this case, patrons are free to come and go as they like. Also included are additional arrangements for venues that have 200 to 1000 people, in which case they can only allow a maximum of 50 to dance (irrespective of whether 200 or 999 are present on the premises).

These 50 are required to dance only on a designated dance floor or area. And the dance floor/area must be based on the 1 in 2 sqm rule, or in the case of 50 dancers, it must be 100 sqm (no such requirement for the ‘up to 200’ scenario mentioned earlier!)

QUESTION: WHAT WAS THE EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT THE 200 CEILING BEFORE HARSHER CONDITIONS ARE IMPOSED?

Answer: According to SA Health, it’s to make contact tracing easier if there is a breakout. But this quite severe restriction can’t be about easier contract tracing, surely?

It is difficult to understand how dancing of itself will cause any greater difficulty for contact tracers where over 200 or more have been in a room – dancing or not! The tracing is required of all attendees if there is an identified case in a room or venue, irrespective of how many have been dancing or not dancing.

But wasn’t this what the QR Scan is all about? A digital, secure and accurate record of attendees?

The dancing decision, while welcome as a first step in a continuing easing of restrictions, has complexity and lack of logic again reflecting that SA Health or the Transition Committee continue to make significant decisions that impact thousands of businesses and tens of thousands of staff without ANY consultation or engagement with the very industry they seek to ‘protect’.

Hotels and hospitality are approaching 12 months of business interruption, disruption and on occasions complete closure, yet according to most public figures including SAPOL Commissioner Grant Stevens, South Australia does not have any community transmission.

Our immediate risks are expatriates returning home with the virus, being quarantined in a Medi Hotel and there being a failure in that system that allows a breakout.

The original ambition of containment of the virus and living with the virus has morphed into elimination without any plan, let alone any consultation with those industries most affected. This has come at a massive cost to hotels and hospitality operators, their suppliers and most importantly our staff.

Surely it’s time for the Government to engage with all sectors of those industries directly and significantly impacted? Together we can devise a way out that avoids panic decisions that shuts cities down at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, that imposes complex and difficult responses to relatively straight forward problems and that puts opening up as the priority not just on a wish list for the future.