West Australian businesses say they are struggling to cope with tighter COVID-19 restrictions introduced yesterday in response to the state's growing Omicron outbreak, and are fearful of further measures being implemented.
The new health measures — including the 2-square-metre rule — form part of the state's level one restrictions that came into force on Monday morning, as the state recorded another day where new, locally acquired COVID-19 cases exceeded 200.
For Ora gym co-owner Samantha Oldham, the added restrictions were "just one more nail in the coffin".
"We are very lucky to have a 1,400sqm gym, so we can do the 2sqm rule and we can really be accommodating to what the government wants, [but] our members are feeling it. They're very frustrated," she said.
"It's going to restrict how many people can actually come to the gym and it's going to restrict when people can train."
The Belmont gym has already had 15 cancellations since the restriction was announced two days ago.
'People are sick of complying'
"People don't want to wear masks in the gym. They don't want to have the 2sqm rule," Ms Oldham said.
"And people are really over the mandates, and they're over having to comply, especially when the rest of Australia is opening up."
Ms Oldham said she had been supportive of the government throughout the pandemic and had followed all the rules to ensure her family business continued to operate safely.
But now she wants to know when those rules will end.
"People don't want to train in the gym. People are scared to train in the gym … we're not having people walk in and sign up during the day anymore, because they just don't know when it's going to end," she said.
"What everybody needs is a time when this is going to end. We need clear instructions and fair instructions, because fitness is a massive part of people's health and mental health.
"We need to stop being treated as second-class [citizens] and we really need to start being treated as an essential service."
Hair salon customers have to wait outside
West Australian Premier Mark McGowan has claimed the restrictions were "relatively modest" and flagged that they could be tightened, if required, to "help reduce increasing transmission".
"We're at a different stage to the eastern states … the eastern states have been through two years of hell, we've been through two years of barely anything," he said.
Hairlarious Kids hairdresser Marie-Claire Dowling said tighter restrictions posed a big challenge for her small salon.
"There's only a very small capacity we can have inside, so it does limit how many people we can take in at one time and how many hairdressers we can have in," she said.
"We do have to ask people quite often to wait outside when they're waiting for their haircut … but we are lucky because we do have a playground outside that kids can play on."
Ms Dowling said that, while the mandates were not favourable, businesses needed to brace for the impact of COVID-19.
"With the border opening, everyone's expecting that we're going to have a massive spike, so we just have to see how it goes," she said.
"[But] moving forward, it would be good to know when things are going to happen and be able to plan around that."
CBD cafe business suffering
Community Coffee director Laurence Greenfield said his CBD cafe had taken a huge hit since case numbers began to rise and people began avoiding the city.
Mr Greenfield said that, with so many people working from home, it was difficult to give his staff shifts.
"In our position, as the business owner, there's only so much we can actually offer in terms of hours when there's no customers around," he said.
"If you look around St Georges Terrace at this time of day, it's usually teeming with people, but right now it's pretty light in foot traffic."
Mr Greenfield said many of the offices that were still open had split their teams and were rotating them through working from home, so even those customer bases had been halved.
Pub patronage plummets
Meanwhile western suburbs publican Kane Mansfield said the 2sqm rule had seen the capacity of the Wembley Hotel halved from its usual 700-person limit.
However, Mr Mansfield said things had already become so quiet that the new rule likely would not be noticed.
"We're finding people are self-regulating anyway. They're only coming out if they need to," he said.
"A lot of the older crew are staying home, they're probably a little bit scared of catching the virus at the moment.
"With the 2sqm rule we're allowed to have 350 in, but there's no way we'll be getting that with people just not coming out."
Mr Mansfield said he was hoping for clarity soon around what compensation the government might provide to businesses like his.
"We've got to keep paying the rent and paying our full-time staff, something to help us with keeping as many staff as we can, there's obviously a staff shortage at the moment anyway," he said.
"So, trying to hang on to those people as best we can with something from the government would be good."
Last week, Mr McGowan said compensation for businesses affected by restrictions was "being worked out".
However, Ms Oldham is worried it will not be enough to cover her losses.
"We've already lost hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past two years with no compensation," she said.
"There's been a lot of talk about their electricity compensation that came through and small government grants that helped … but that is nothing in comparison to what we've lost and are expected to lose."
