Police will scour through hours of CCTV footage from quarantine hotels
A police audit of CCTV footage from Brisbane’s quarantine hotels is underway in an urgent attempt to find ‘gaps’ in procedure.
QLD News
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POLICE will scour through hours of CCTV footage at Queensland’s quarantine hotels in a full audit of the surveillance used to monitor guests and staff.
It comes after authorities this week revealed there were no cameras on the level where COVID-positive guests stayed at Hotel Grand Chancellor.
Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll announced the audit was already underway, stating two quarantine hotels had already had new CCTV cameras installed.
“I’ve asked for a full audit of quarantine hotels and their CCTV footage,” the Commissioner said.
“So what we will do, is if we find there is any gap in that whole process, that we ourselves make sure we put CCTV footage in those hotels, and that has already commenced in two of those hotels.”
Queensland yesterday recorded three new cases of COVID-19, with two being acquired overseas and detected in hotel quarantine.
The third case is historical and was recorded in Cairns.
Hours after the announcement South Australian authorities confirmed they will open their borders to Greater Brisbane from midnight tonight.
It comes as fragments of COVID-19 were detected in sewerage across the southeast including at Gibson Island in South Brisbane, Pimpama, Loganholme and Wynnum.
Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young said it didn’t mean there were new cases in those communities, but authorities were treating the results with caution.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said all 129 guests who had been transferred from the Hotel Grand Chancellor had tested negative.
“That’s good news because that was our high risk group that we were looking at,” she said.
Ms Palaszczuk said of the 147 people who had left the hotel since December 30 – those who were in Queensland had tested negative.
All of the 226 staff have been contacted and some have been tested.
Dr Young said she was “becoming more and more confident that there is no ongoing spread” related to the UK strain cluster.
She said she believed Queensland had avoided a Victoria-style lockdown because authorities were able to find the first COVID-positive case and respond quickly.
“If we can find the first case we can get onto it really, really quickly and we can manage it,” she said.
Waiting until the fortieth case made it much more difficult, she said.
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