A cargo ship carrying 16 crew members suspected to be infected with COVID-19 is due to arrive in Perth later this morning.
The Ken Hou, which has 22 crew members on board, was due to berth in Albany on Saturday, before reporting 16 crew with elevated temperatures or mild respiratory symptoms.
The Panama-flagged grain carrier, which was last at port in Thailand on August 7, is now sailing to Cockburn Sound and is due to arrive around 9:00am.
"The authorities have instructed the ship to sail for Cockburn Sound where we can do a better analysis of the people," WA Premier Mark McGowan said.
"The Australian Maritime Safety Authority is keen for the ship to stay for a period of time."
Mr McGowan said a second ship with two crew members reporting cold-like symptoms was due to arrive in Cockburn Sound on Sunday.
However, the Premier said those on board were not suspected to be COVID-19 positive.
"The last time she was in Indonesia was [August 1] so that is way outside of two weeks, so the suspicion is it's just a cold but let's just wait and see what the analysis shows and hopefully that is the case," he said.
Mr McGowan said "every precaution [is] in place to protect the state".
WA recorded no new cases of COVID-19 overnight.
McGowan urges NSW to stick to national plan
Under the National Cabinet's four-phase pathway out of the pandemic, states and territories have agreed to opening borders and reducing lockdowns once 70 to 80 per cent of Australians are vaccinated.
Last week, New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian said her state was "learning to live" with the Delta strain of COVID-19.
However, Mr McGowan said the NSW government should follow the national strategy.
"I know what the Premier of NSW said yesterday, [but] she must have been in a different meeting than me.
"We all agreed that we have to follow the measures we agreed on a few weeks ago and we have to continue to suppress with [a] vengeance COVID across Australia."
'There's an Australia outside of NSW'
NSW recorded its worst day of the COVID-19 pandemic on Sunday with 830 new cases and three deaths.
The number of new cases is a record for a 24-hour period in Australia, beating yesterday's total of 825 infections.
"What's happened in NSW is obviously tragic and very difficult … but there's an Australia outside of NSW and we're all doing our best to keep the virus out," Mr McGowan said.
The Premier acknowledged Victoria and the ACT were doing everything they could to "crush and kill the virus".
"It's only NSW that is not — they're letting down the entire country," he said.
While Prime Minister Scott Morrison said it was "highly unlikely" that Australia would be able to achieve COVID zero in the future, Mr McGowan said the NSW approach of living with the virus should not be accepted.
"There's a lot of excuse-making now … because NSW didn't do what it should've done back in June and over the course of the last two months, they're now saying the NSW model should apply everywhere, which is to give in — I don't accept that.
"We agreed on Friday we'd use every lever to suppress, to beat down the virus … whether it's zero or close to zero."
