Jay Weatherill caught the virus after attending the 40-year reunion of Henley High School at Theatre Bugs in Adelaide on November 27. Health authorities later revealed 19 partygoers had since tested positive for Covid, including Mr Weatherill. Laboratory tests were still underway to determine if the school reunion infections were the new Omicron variant.It’s believed an interstate traveller at the function was the source of the infection, who then spread the virus to the rest of the group.Despite Mr Weatherill, 57, being fully vaccinated and not requiring hospital care, he responded to an Adelaide Advertiser’s interview request saying, “I’m too sick to talk”. The outbreak is the first string of cases in the state since SA reopened its borders to vaccinated travellers on November 23.In that short period, SA has recorded 31 cases with 27 still active, but none have needed to be hospitalised.SA chief public health officer Nicola Spurrier said the source of the infection was still yet to be confirmed.“We can make an assumption that it is probably [linked to] somebody from interstate but because we’ve had our borders open since the 23rd, it could be somebody locally,” she told reporters on Thursday. “In the past, we would have put huge numbers of people into quarantine and we would have listed public exposure sites.“But we are in a different phase now that we’ve got a high number of people vaccinated.”Premier Steven Marshall said the state had no plan to slam its borders shut.“The reality is you can’t keep Delta out indefinitely,” he said. “The cases were inevitable, and now we are responding.”Mr Weatherill served as the SA Premier from October of 2011 to March, 2018.
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