Police, security officers to guard dedicated quarantine facility
Police and government security will take over from private companies as the state rushes to overhaul hotel quarantine.
Coronavirus
Don't miss out on the headlines from Coronavirus. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Premier Steven Marshall has ordered an overhaul of the state’s hotel-quarantine system, including moving all COVID-positive cases from medi-hotels to a dedicated facility.
The new centre will be guarded by police and government security officers, instead of the private companies that keep watch on medi-hotels.
It came as SA Heath revealed one new case – at Woodville High.
The changes are part of an eight-point plan to improve quarantine controls. The city’s former Wakefield Hospital is the preferred site.
The State Government’s lease on the site was due to run out next month but it has now been extended to the end of February.
Mr Marshall said a “shield” was needed between SA and positive cases, adding that his plan would start “immediately”.
However, it could take health officials weeks to prepare the site, by which time many of the current positive cases would have recovered.
“We will now transfer positive COVID cases from medi-hotels to a dedicated health facility,” Mr Marshall said.
“One option which we are now considering it the old Wakefield Hospital.
“There is a large capacity there which can be flexed up to deal with surges.”
The new approach comes after an expatriate couple contracted the virus while quarantined in the city’s Peppers medi-hotel, which is at the centre of the Parafield cluster.
SA Health tonight announced one new COVID-19 case had been identified in a female student at Woodville High School. They urged anyone who attended the school last Monday, November 23, to isolate immediately with all members of their household until further notice.
The status of the case or its link to the Parafield cluster was not known last night, but SA Health said more information would be provided to all staff, students and their families/caregivers as soon as possible.
The school will be closed today to undergo thorough cleaning and to allow SA Health to do detailed contact tracing and risk assessment.
Speaking earlier about the quarantine changes, chief public health officer Nicola Spurrier indicated there could be a long lead time to ensure the new facility is fit for purpose.
“I can’t give you the exact number of days or weeks,” she said.
“All I can say is this is a really important thing we are doing here in South Australia and we will get it done as soon as we possibly can.
“We need to make sure there are beds and staff, that we have the kitchen sorted, there’s food and such like – these things take some time.”
There are nine active cases in SA that are classified as overseas-acquired. International flights to Adelaide are on indefinite hold.
The source of the Parafield cluster has now been traced to a security guard working at the hotel, rather than a cleaner as first thought.
The cluster stands at 29 cases.
SA Health staff combing through hours of CCTV footage from Peppers have not worked out how the returned traveller caught the virus within the hotel.
Officials say there is no evidence of deliberate safety protocol breaches, of staff entering quarantined rooms or of “inappropriate behaviour.”
“This virus … is even more transmissible and more contagious than I probably even imagined,” Professor Spurrier said.
About half of the Peppers’ staff have now been tested and all were negative.
Mr Marshall continued to praise the SA medi-hotel system as “gold-rated” but said his plan would further strengthen it. Police and security staff guarding the new facility will not be deployed to other vulnerable sites including hospitals, jails, aged-care centres or medi-hotels.
Opposition Leader Peter Malinauskas, who on the weekend called for a stop to the medi-hotel scheme in its current format, welcomed the new quarantine plan.
Both he and SA Best MLC Frank Pangallo have called for an independent inquiry into the medi-hotel situation.
“We all want the same thing, we want a quarantine system that works and protects South Australians from the virus,” Mr Malinauskas said.
Water checks at hot spots
By Clare Peddie
SA Water is expanding wastewater testing for COVID-19 to hone in on hot spots through a network of 22 sampling locations across the city.
The award-winning project team is working on the first complete set of samples, with results expected today.
SA Health principal water quality adviser Dr David Cunliffe said wastewater surveillance could support early detection of disease.
“There has been some evidence from overseas that they’ve detected COVID-19 in wastewater before it was detected clinically, that has happened,” he said.
“We’d expect that if you had a number of cases here that you’d pick it up, so for example with Bolivar, we are picking up cases in the medi-hotels, which is reasonably impressive when you think of the number of cases and they’re in a catchment of 700,000 people.”
Last month the team realised that weekly sampling at the city’s three wastewater treatment plants, Bolivar, Christies Beach and Glenelg, was not fine-grained enough to pinpoint problem areas.
“If you’re trying to pick up one case in 700,000 that’s a fair challenge,” Dr Cunliffe said. “So, we took the decision to break the catchment down into smaller segments to increase the sensitivity. We aimed at an average of catchments that served about 50,000 people.”
Then when the Parafield cluster emerged, they began to roll out the more refined sampling strategy, starting with the Salisbury area.
They took two samples in Salisbury and four in the Le Fevre Peninsula, “going down as far as Henley Beach” last week.
Of the six samples taken last Tuesday, November 17, there was one positive sample in the Salisbury area, which was expected. It works on a variety of human excretions.
“We know that about 50 per cent of people excrete the virus in faeces,” Dr Cunliffe said.
“But some people throw tissues into the toilet and when you shower, if you have an infection then secretions go down the sink or down the bath plughole.
“If you clean your teeth ... fluids get washed in. So the materials actually comes from a mixture of sources.”
SA Water’s senior manager of water expertise and research, Dr Daniel Hoefel, is proud of the team’s efforts.
They won an award for Excellence in Research and Development at the Australian Water Association’s South Australian Water Awards.
The most recent detections at the Bolivar Wastewater Treatment Plant, related to international arrivals in medi-hotels, go back to October 31.
“We can get a result within eight hours of getting the sample back to the lab,” Mr Hoefel said.
“Then, we have an agreement with SA Health that if we do have a positive, it’s immediate notification.”
‘It can be fatal’: Health warning for SA babies as RSV spike climbs
A health alert has been issued to SA parents after a shock spike in RSV cases presenting to emergency rooms – with more than half being young children under the age of 5.
New emergency ‘threats’ putting SA at risk, landmark inquiry finds
The Covid pandemic, River Murray flood crisis, bushfires and statewide blackout were all declared major emergencies over past 20 years. Now, a major inquiry identifies new threats risking state.