Coronavirus Australia news: South Australia begins countdown to end of lockdown at midnight

South Australia’s ‘heroine’ doctor

South Australia’s Chief Public Health Officer Nicola Spurrier has praised an “astute young doctor” in a hospital emergency department for preventing a full-blown coronavirus outbreak in the state.

The junior doctor, who Professor Spurrier did not name, picked up that a woman in her 80s had a slight cough when she turned up at the Lyell McEwin Hospital, in Adelaide’s northern suburbs, last Friday night.

The woman had coronavirus and now so do 25 of her family members and their close contacts.

They are now known as the Parafield cluster, but so far there have been no new coronavirus cases in South Australia not directly linked with the elderly woman and one of her children, who worked at the Peppers Waymouth…