Poor air circulation in hotels and their bathrooms means infectious travellers from the northern hemisphere should be quarantined in regional locations, says World Health Organisation adviser and infectious disease expert UNSW's Professor Marylouise McLaws.

Her calls for a relocation of quarantine out of city-based hotels came as Brisbane's Grand Chancellor was evacuated and more than 600 people put into quarantine after sequencing revealed two returning travellers had caught the contagious UK mutation of COVID-19 from a guest on the same floor of the hotel.