Returned travellers arrive at Victoria’s new-look hotel quarantine program
Acting Premier James Merlino says Victoria could help deliver more COVID vaccines after the first overseas arrivals were escorted to a newly revamped hotel quarantine.
Victoria
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Victoria could take more responsibility for handling the rollout of the coronavirus vaccine, with Acting Premier James Merlino flagging the state was ready to help deliver more jabs.
The Andrews Government will also set up another two vaccination hubs, at the Melbourne Showgrounds and the Mercure Ballarat, on top of the five already announced.
Victorian authorities will also set up vaccinations at community health centres and mobile pop-up clinics to better reach those in public housing included in early stages of the rollout.
Mr Merlino said the government believed it was on track to deliver 300,000 doses itself by the middle of May.
But with national cabinet set to meet tomorrow, he said there was room for more and wanted to prevent a discrepancy between states.
It comes after NSW announced plans for a massive vaccine hub that could administer more doses than currently required.
“States and territories can do more. We can do more. We’ve got the capacity. “ he said.
“But it's a Commonwealth decision to broaden the cohort and that needs to be nationally consistent.
“It shouldn’t be dependent on whether you live in Victoria, New South Wales or any other part of the country.
“The vaccination rollout should be exactly the same.
“If the Commonwealth wants states and territories to do more they should take that to national cabinet tomorrow.”
When asked about the issue on Thursday, federal Health Minister Greg Hunt welcomed the idea and said the vaccine partnership agreement already allowed the states to expand their role once they were ready.
TRAVELLERS ARRIVE TO REVAMPED QUARANTINE
The first planeload of overseas arrivals has landed in Melbourne, with about dozen people taken straight into hotel quarantine at the Intercontinental Hotel at Flinders Lane.
A number of police, military and medical personnel escorted the arrivals off a SkyBus and straight into the hotel.
At least 100 people are due to arrive in Victoria from overseas immediately.
The first international flight in two months touched down in Melbourne just before 4.30am on Thursday.
Baggage handlers unloaded the plane’s cargo while passengers remained on board for more than 45 minutes.
Passengers arriving from Colombo on Sri Lankan Airlines flight UL604 were quickly whisked away on Sky Buses bound for the Intercontinental Hotel on Collins St.
Other international arrivals expected on Thursday included flights from Singapore at 9.50am, Doha at 3.55pm, Singapore at 8.25pm and Dubai at 9.50pm.
Just 16 passengers were expected on one of the Singapore Airlines flights.
A number of SkyBus vans and buses were seen driving across the tarmac as passengers waited to be transferred to hotels across the city.
Two SkyBuses transporting passengers from a Singapore Airlines flight arrived at the InterContinental hotel about 12pm.
Authorities escorted about a dozen people from the buses into the hotel, moving them one at a time.
Police also moved diners at Rosso Cafe away from the hotel’s entrance as the arrivals entered the lobby
Six hotels will be included in the program, including the ill-fated Holiday Inn at Melbourne Airport that was responsible for an outbreak in February.
Other hotels include the InterContinental on Collins St, Novotel Ibis at Melbourne Central, the Holiday Inn at Flinders Lane, the Element Melbourne Richmond on Swan Street and the Pan Pacific at the Convention Centre.
Meanwhile, the state has gone 41 days since its last case of local transmission was recorded, and the active caseload is back at zero.
It comes as a tour of the Four Points by Sheraton in Docklands has revealed the intense new measures introduced to keep the virus locked behind closed doors and away from the nervous Victorian public.
On arrival, guests are loaded on to buses that only permit groups of 15 and must place their luggage on trolleys to be quickly moved on before other people come into contact.
To get into the hotel requires layers of sanitisation unlike anything most Victorians have experienced in recent memory.
Anyone entering the building must be wearing a mask but will quickly be asked to sanitise their hands and put on a new one that has not come from outside.
Guests are asked to sign a detention notice and quickly ushered into a lift and their room within minutes.
Every elevator is cleaned between journeys.
All staff members have their own unique QR code, which details their vaccination status and who lives in their house.
This information is used to build a database that allows contract tracers to lock down anyone who may be an infection risk in an outbreak.
If a coronavirus outbreak hit one of revamped Victoria’s quarantine hotels, it would take just 45 minutes for authorities to gather the details of everyone in the building and their close contacts.
After Victoria’s last outbreak, every hotel used in the program must now have ventilation which does not allow the virus to spread into the corridor.
Exhaust fans have been altered to suck air into the rooms and stop it from flowing to other parts of the hotel.
Victoria Police, floor monitors and Department of Health staff are all kept in separate rooms and are not allowed to come into contact with each other.
To minimise risk they must use separate toilets.
Strict infection control measures also mean that it is a painstaking process to go anywhere near the rooms where guests are staying, which are known as red zones.
Workers are not allowed to use their fresh masks and protective equipment without sanitising every time they touch a new item.
It can take five to 10 minutes just to put on all the gear needed to go up in the elevator towards where guests are staying.
Employees must also regularly undertake “fit checks” where they try on different types of masks to see how air flows into their protective gear.
Hi-tech sensors measure staff as they read out the alphabet and do squats to see if there is any risk of contamination.
On each floor, staff wearing face shields are patrolling but cannot work for more than 90 minutes before they are moved along and asked to go through the lengthy process of suiting up all over again.
No books or phones are allowed because they create an unnecessary contact risk for the virus to spread.
The ban on personal objects may seem like common sense now but this rule was not in place for workers during the first version of the program which had to be scrapped.
Instead staff are told to regularly walk through the corridors and keep an ear out for signs of distress.
This could include a family overwhelmed by caring for their children, a returned traveller who is struggling with their health or incidents of domestic violence.
Anyone with a serious health problem is moved to complex care where they can be treated by specialist health professionals.
Returned travellers are tested four times throughout their stay and are then encouraged to take two more tests once they have left the building.
Employees are tested every day to ensure any future outbreaks are detected the moment they become infectious.
Originally published as Returned travellers arrive at Victoria’s new-look hotel quarantine program
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