Covid-positive miner transiting through Brisbane puts NT in lockdown
A Covid-postive mine worker who stayed at Brisbane’s quarantine hotel hotel before travelling to the Northern Territory has plunged an entire community into lockdown.
QLD News
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A mine worker’s nine hour stay in a Brisbane quarantine hotel has plunged the Northern Territory into its first Covid-19 community crisis and snap lockdown since the pandemic began.
The mine worker from Victoria transited through Brisbane on June 18 and was put into hotel quarantine on the fifth floor of the Novotel Brisbane Airport—where transmission of the Delta strain had recently occurred between people staying in adjacent rooms.
The worker stayed in the hotel for nine hours before he was allowed to catch his connecting flight to the NT.
Queensland chief health officer Dr Jeannette Young confirmed the man was infected with Covid-19 during his stay at the hotel.
But authorities remain unsure how the transmission occurred.
“We have another case that the Northern Territory informed us about. So this is a fly-in, fly-out worker who works in the mines, one of the mines around 350km or so from Alice Springs,” she said.
“And he flew in from Victoria into Brisbane, stayed nine hours overnight, then flew on to the Northern Territory.
“And he was on that floor five of the Novotel hotel at the Brisbane airport where we had that other transmission event. Because he’d been on that floor, he was asked to get tested, which he did, and that came back positive.”
Dr Young said she doesn’t believe the worker contracted Covid-19 during the same transmission incident when a couple in international quarantine on the same floor were infected by a single person also in international quarantine living in the adjacent room.
“I’ve asked, and it’s happening as we speak, that every single person on that floor five of that hotel has moved to different floors. We did extend quarantine for people who were still on that and we went and contact traced everyone who’d left that floor for an extended period,” Dr Young said.
“I don’t think this was the same transmission event that caused the other infection there. I think it was a different one on that floor but we went very widely in our contact tracing for people who’d been on that floor. Now, anyone who works in that mine – there are about 700 or so people I’m told by the Northern Territory, that have been made close contact.”
The Northern Territory on Sunday reported four new cases of Covid-19 linked to the mine worker; including two of whom were already in isolation at the mine and one who had travelled on to NSW.
The case that has plunged the NT regions of Darwin, Palmerston and the Darwin rural area into a 48-hour lockdown is a close contact of the mine worker who has since tested the positive.
A Sunshine Coast woman – also connected to the miner’s case – has also since tested positive.
The 64-year-old man was one of 211 workers who had flown from the mine to Darwin.
Territory authorities said 196 of those had been contacted but 15 remain unaccounted for.
“If it gets worse, it will be too hard to control,” Chief Minister Michael Gunner said.
“So we are taking extreme action right now to stop or slow any spread before the coronavirus is let loose in the territory.”
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