Authorities scramble to trace mystery COVID-19 case after six sent to quarantine
Alarm has set in among workers at Brisbane Youth Detention Centre after it was revealed their health may be at risk when a supervisor tested positive for coronavirus. She’d worked five shifts while infectious. The centre has been locked down for a fortnight.
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THE Brisbane Youth Detention Centre is expected to be in lockdown for at least a fortnight after a supervisor in her 70s tested positive to the pandemic coronavirus.
Personal protective equipment has been issued to 127 young people at the Wacol centre and more than 500 staff members after the worker, from Bundamba, in Ipswich, was diagnosed with the virus.
She is in a stable condition in the Ipswich Hospital.
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Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk renewed pleas for Queenslanders to stay at home if they are unwell after details emerged the woman had continued going to work while she was sick.
Queensland Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young said the woman was believed to have developed symptoms on August 10 and worked five shifts while infectious.
She said Queensland Health had begun testing both staff and residents at the centre.
Authorities will also test to see if the strain is the same as the three Logan women who returned from a trip to Melbourne – two of whom tested positive for COVID-19 – and were fined $4000 for making false declarations on their border paperwork.
The state’s Youth Justice Detector-General Bob Gee described the infected detention centre supervisor as a “valued employee in terms of her experience”.
“We’re concerned about her ongoing health,” he said.
It’s understood that in the supervisor role, the woman would have been in close contact with other staff in a mini unit in the jail, with limited contact with children.
The Together Union represents staff at the jail who are concerned about the positive case.
Together secretary Alex Scott said there were challenges with communicating to staff.
“The fear is the unknown (and) is really what is causing people concern who have worked shifts at the same time as her,” he told The Courier-Mail.
“We’ve still got a number of members deeply concerned about what is going on.
“I think the broader process around PPE and doing the temperature checks on the way in, they’ve been doing the right thing so far.
“I think at this stage the staff are generally concerned about the fact that they’ve been exposed for the last four days, before the employer knew.”
Mr Scott said the union was comfortable with arrangements put in place by the government around protections for staff.
“It’s more a matter of making sure who might have been on shift over the last five days and working out how many of those people were in close contact and have to be sent home for isolation plus testing as opposed to those who can continue to go to work,” he said.
Mr Scott said it was likely some children would have left the centre during the period.
“But I think we’re more worried about the mental health of the kids left behind, it is going to be a deeply traumatic process for them and for the staff as well in terms of (restricted access to) friends and family,” he said.
He said staff not able to work would be entitled to paid pandemic leave.
Mr Gee said new admissions to the detention centre would not be accepted while it remained in lockdown.
In the meantime, young offenders will be kept in watch houses and if necessary, transported to the Cleveland Youth Detention Centre, in Townsville, which has 34 spare beds.
CCTV footage from the Wacol centre will be used to trace who the supervisor may have come into contact with while infectious.
“The advice I have initially is that her contact was limited to only a very small number of young people,” Mr Gee said.
“She has not worked walking through the accommodation section. She’s worked in the operations centre.”
The case has prompted one of Australia’s leading advocates of human rights in the criminal legal system to say she fears there could now be a surge in COVID-19 cases akin to those seen in Victoria’s aged care facilities.
“I am afraid this is looking like Queensland will be dealing with a surge in COVID-19 cases in detention centres the way Victoria has been hit in aged care,” Debbie Kilroy, the CEO of Sisters Inside, said.
Ms Kilroy told The Courier-Mail that one young girl was released from the detention centre last Friday.
“We have been supporting that child. I’m afraid for the child and for our workers who have been helping her. We will have to trace movements. I’d be surprised if she was the only one released recently and the frightening thing is most of the kids in the centre are from Aboriginal or Torres Strait communities and these are the people most vulnerable to the disease,” Ms Kilroy said.
Ms Kilroy has called for all the children in the centre to be released into proper medical care rather than put into lockdown.
“If you put kids into solitary confinement it has a big impact on their mental health. Most of the kids are on remand and have not been found guilty of anything yet they could be facing a death sentence.” she said.
When Queensland Health was asked if it was tracing the steps of a child or children released in the past few days from the detention centre it replied: “As with all positive cases, Queensland Health does contact tracing to determine close contacts – this is underway, and any specifics we have available was talked about in the press conference earlier today.”
The latest Queensland case comes after another woman tested positive to the virus on her return to Japan from Brisbane, via Sydney.
Dr Young said the Japanese resident had spent most of her time in Queensland looking after her sick father in the Morningside-Bulimba area.
Queensland issued a public health alert on Wednesday after the woman tested positive in a compulsory swab on her arrival in Tokyo.
The alert has been issued for people who travelled on Virgin flight VA962 from Brisbane to Sydney on Monday, particularly people who travelled in rows 25 to 29 who are deemed to be “close contacts”.
Anyone who dined at The Jam Pantry cafe at Greenslopes, on Brisbane’s southside, on Sunday, especially those who were there between 9.45-11am, are also asked to monitor for symptoms.
“The woman arrived in Australia in mid-July and was in hotel quarantine in Sydney for two weeks prior to coming to Brisbane,” Dr Young said.
“While in quarantine, she returned two negative test results. Because she quarantined in Sydney for two weeks and travelled straight to Brisbane from hotel quarantine, she could go about her normal life in Brisbane.”
Health Minister Steven Miles said the woman arrived in Brisbane on August 1 and spent most of her time with her ill father.
He said contact tracers had so far identified six close contacts.
Asked how likely it was the woman caught the virus in Brisbane, Mr Miles said: “It’s hard to tell exactly what’s happened here, particularly given that she’s now in Japan and not available to our public health staff to do further testing.
“If she was here we would do further testing. We’re just being very, very cautious. We’re treating it as though she could have been infectious. We are contacting people who could have been in contact with her.
“We’ve tested her father. The results of that test aren’t back yet.”
Dr Young said health authorities believed the risk to Queenslanders from that case was “very low”.
The case has not been included in Queensland’s tally of 1093 infections because she tested positive in Japan.