Dear Members,

We want to reassure our athletes, coaches, officials and members that we are monitoring the Coronavirus situation and possible impact on our people.

As the situation is constantly evolving, the most up to date advice and information can be found at the AIS webpage, dedicated to providing evidence based, real time advice in a number of areas, including FAQ’s relating to COVID-19 (Coronavirus).
 
The website also links to other sources of information including the Australian Government Department of Health and WHO situation reports.

In addition to this information, we ask all athletes, coaches, officials and members to follow these further guidelines in order to keep the swimming community as healthy as possible during this period of time.
 
We ask that you remain vigilant and limit your interaction with the community if:

You or a family member has had ‘close contact’ with a confirmed case of COVID-19.  Please note that ‘close contact’ is defined as having greater than 15 minutes face-to-face contact or the sharing of a closed space for more than two hours with a confirmed case. You or family member is unwell with cold or flu like symptoms (these include collective symptoms such as fever, breathing difficulties such as breathlessness, cough, sore throat, fatigue or tiredness.). You or family member is currently ‘self-isolating’ due to suspected COVID-19 infection. You or family member is currently being tested or has been confirmed as having COVID-19 You or family member has recently visited countries (last 14 days) described as ‘higher risk’ by the Australian Government.
Please note that this continues to change on a daily basis.  https://www.health.gov.au/news/health-alerts/novel-coronavirus-2019-ncov-health-alert  If in any doubt, please err on the side of caution as much as possible, making decisions in your best interest.
 
In addition, we ask everyone to practice high levels of hygiene health (washing hands, sanitizer etc) which are widely considered by health experts to be key to disease prevention and management. We also ask that we avoid physical contact (shaking hands etc). We want to circumvent as much as possible a situation where we can spread any virus, or one where we have high numbers of people needing to isolate at the same time.
 
Artistic Swimming Australia with also made the difficult decision to cancel the Hancock Prospecting Australian Age Championships and Hancock Prospecting Australian Artistic Swimming Championships.
The 13-15 high performance team program 2020 has been also canceled.

 
This decision was based on the health and safety of the artistic swimming community and their wider families.

 
We understand that there will be significant disappointment for swimmers who have put in so much time and effort to be in peak condition for this event, but these are unprecedented times and the welfare and safety to our athletes, coaches, officials, members and their families is paramount and at the centre of the decision-making.
 
This is a constantly evolving situation and we are already seeing substantial and widespread event cancellations and postponements worldwide.
 
We appreciate that there are families that have made travel arrangements to head to Perth, so we are given as much time as possible to amend these plans if possible. More information will be provided soon.

We understand that this may have a negative financial impact for families and are sorry for this.   The merchandise will be sent to the club’s address and all the fees paid will be refunded.

In the wake of cancellation of these events, we are currently looking at the options for taking part at the 2020 NZ Artistic Swimming National Championships, and will advise our community when decision is made.
 
Keeping with current government advice, there are no plans to change State or local events, such as Club display of less than 500 people that are currently happening, but these events will be carefully reviewed daily by State organisations.

 
We thank everyone in advance and will continue to provide information as it comes to hand.