Quarantine failures have led to job-destroying lockdowns, Malinauskas says

Quarantine failures across the nation have destroyed employment and made investment in serious facilities a must, the Opposition leader says.

Labor Leader Peter Malinauskas is condemning a nationwide failure of hotel quarantine and urging proper investment in serious facilities that contain the coronavirus, rather than letting it out.

A series of job-destroying statewide lockdowns across the country had been triggered by repeated medi-hotel failures, Mr Malinauskas said.

Responding to Victoria’s plan for a dedicated quarantine facility at Mickleham, just outside Melbourne’s northern suburbs, the state Opposition Leader said a similar centre could have been in place in South Australia by now if his call last November for COVID-19 quarantine options to be reviewed was heeded.

Leader of the opposition Peter Malinauskas. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Naomi Jellicoe

India’s disastrous COVID-19 surge triggered Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s announcement on Tuesday of a flight ban from that country until at least May 15 and a three-day suspension of all international flights into SA – lifted on Wednesday.

Premier Steven Marshall has repeatedly defended SA’s medi-hotel system, insisting health advice recommends quarantine facilities be close to a major hospital and a sufficiently large and qualified workforce.

But Mr Malinauskas said hotels were designed to house business travellers and tourists, not contain a virus.

“What Australia needs is proper investment in serious quarantine facilities that actually achieve the objective of keeping the virus in, rather than it getting out,” he said.

“The current system of medi-hotels is failing right across the country.

“We’ve got to have quarantine facilities that are built for purpose and actually work, rather than hotels, which aren’t actually designed for this function.

“And when they fail, we have statewide lockdowns, and when we have statewide lockdowns, people lose jobs.”

SA reported three new COVID-19 cases yesterday, all from a medi-hotel.

The new cases were a woman in her 30s and two men in their 40s, who all acquired their infections overseas and have been in medi-hotels since their arrival

This took SA’s active case number to 32.

All the infections were acquired overseas.

Mr Marshall said Australia’s only dedicated COVID-positive facility had been established in Adelaide’s CBD on health advice after a review following last November’s Parafield cluster.

A quarantine facility for Pacific Island fruit pickers was established in the Riverland because they came from low-risk countries.

“My commitment to all South Australians is their State Government will continue to roll out our strong plan, backed by expert health advice, to protect them from both the economic and health threat of this unprecedented health emergency,” Mr Marshall said.

”I’m extremely proud of every single South Australian and how we all have contributed to make our great state the safest place in the world to live during the global pandemic.”

India’s coronavirus death toll shot past 200,000 on Wednesday as a relentless wave of new coronavirus cases swamped hospitals and sent families into the streets of the capital in search of oxygen supplies and medicine.

Infection and death rates are soaring in the vast country of 1.3 billion, in contrast with the United States and some European nations, which are taking tentative steps back towards normal life.

The virus has now killed more than 3.1 million people worldwide, with India driving the latest surge, recording 360,000 new infections – a global record – and more than 3000 deaths on Wednesday.