Returned travellers to front inquiry as it’s revealed COVID-19 kids ‘spread human waste around hotel room’
Security guards and returned travellers are set to uncover just what took place behind the doors of Victoria’s bungled hotel quarantine system — giving evidence to its inquiry after the grotesque behaviour of the family who sparked the second wave was revealed.
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Security guards and returned travellers will expose what happened behind the doors of Victoria’s bungled hotel quarantine system.
The witnesses will begin giving evidence Thursday at an inquiry into the program.
Among them will be respected lawyer and executive director of the Human Rights Law Centre Hugh de Kretser.
Mr de Kretser did a 14-day quarantine at Rydges hotel with his family.
The inquiry will spend Thursday and Friday hearing evidence from those who experienced quarantine as either a worker or a quarantined guest.
Two nurses who worked at the hotels will also give evidence, along with an authorised officer, Luke Ashford, on Friday, and an unnamed security guard.
Returning travellers Kate Hyslop and Ricky Singh, Sue and Ron Erasmus, and Liliana Ratcliff, will also appear as witnesses.
It follows revelations the COVID-positive family that inadvertently sparked Victoria’s deadly second wave of COVID-19 infections was allowed to walk the corridors after distressed children spread human waste around their room at the Rydges hotel.
The inquiry into the bungled hotel quarantine program was told it was “possible’’ the family-of-four infected staff during these events, but the exact transmission point remained a mystery.
A Rydges employee and two security guards fell ill seven days after the incident and were diagnosed with COVID-19.
It then spread to 17 other people, unleashing Victoria’s second wave.
On Wednesday Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Australian Defence Force and contract tracing support had been on offer for Victoria since “day one” and offered a critical view of Victoria’s handling of the crisis.
Speaking to Nine, Mr Morrison said there had been “many issues” in the state’s response to the virus and the ADF had been sent in to improve the situation in the state.
“There clearly have been many issues there on the tracing, on the quarantine, and I think that’s all becoming very clear,” Mr Morrison said.
“What I have to focus on is the day to day of ensuring we get on top of this, that the numbers we’re seeing coming out of Victoria on cases is improving.
“Obviously, the number of deaths we’ve seen is very upsetting and disturbing.”
He added: “We’ve been offering support from day one, on all aspects of how to manage this virus.”
Mr Morrison said he sent ADF Commodore Mark Hill to Victoria to improve contact tracing and other key issues.
“One of the key things he was doing was to boost the information systems, ensure that there was better tasking of the tracing capabilities,” Mr Morrison said.
“The tracing arrangements in New South Wales have been outstanding.
“There’ve been industrial scale, and I think they’ve been a key reason as to why here in New South Wales, the results, under similar pressures with outbreaks, have been very different.”
The Rydges on Swanston outbreak in Melbourne, and two separate outbreaks stemming from a man and a couple – all returned travellers – quarantined at the Stamford Plaza Hotel, have been identified as leading to 99 per cent of Victoria’s second wave of COVID cases.
The exact moment when the virus jumped from quarantined guests to workers at the Stamford has not been identified.
In shocking evidence to the inquiry on Tuesday, Department of Health and Human Services epidemiologist Dr Charles Alpren said the department first knew genomic testing had linked guests and staff infections at Rydges on May 30.
The Doherty Institute gave weekly updates to the department on the outbreak all through June and took part in teleconferences.
Premier Daniel Andrews said on June 30 that the Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton had only told him that day about the genomic testing, and that he had called the inquiry hours later.
Releasing the data that both Mr Andrews and Dr Sutton had previously refused to detail, Dr Alpren said combined genomic and epidemiological data meant: “the Department concluded that almost all cases of COVID-19 in the community (not acquired overseas) that have been sequenced among cases diagnosed after May 30, 2020, can be traced back to the transmission that started at the Rydges Hotel Swanston Street and the Stamford Plaza hotel.’’
Nineteen people died in Victoria’s first COVID wave – until May 30 – with 1645 people infected.
After May 30, another 15,593 people were infected and 315 people have died.
Mr Andrews stood by his claim he only found out the genomic testing results on the day he called the inquiry.
“The genomic sequencing, the full briefing that I received on the morning that I announced, I think it was the morning, certainly within hours of getting that briefing, we announced the judicial inquiry,” he said.
The incident involving the family took place on May 18 after all four members of the family had been diagnosed with COVID-19 after returning from overseas.
According to Dr Alpren, an “episode of environmental contamination’’ occurred in the family’s room which required assistance from nursing staff to rectify.
It is thought the incident involved highly-distressed children spreading human waste.
“Subsequently there is a suggestion that the family were approved to walk outside their room, during which they were accompanied by security guards,’’ Dr Alpren said.
“It is possible a transmission event or events happened at this point.’’
However he said no transmission point had been identified, that the staff were supervised on their walk and had never left the hotel.
Dr Alpren’s evidence laid bare the full impact of the devastating breakdown in hotel quarantine at Rydges in May, and the Stamford in June.
“At the time of the Rydges outbreak in Victoria there were few other cases of COVID-19 which had been acquired in Australia,’’ he said.
“All the other outbreaks active when cases from the Rydges outbreak first appearance have now ceased.’’
“In my opinion, it is likely that a high proportion, approximately 99 per cent of current cases of COVID-19 in Victoria, have arisen from Rydges or Stamford.’’
He said 90 per cent of these cases were linked to Rydges and 10 per cent to the Stamford.
The inquiry before former judge Jennifer Coate continues on Thursday.
WHY DID DAN ANDREWS REFUSE TO RELEASE COVID-19 DATA?
So now it’s official: the Andrews Government has known for three months that people working at the Rydges on Swanston hotel had been infected with COVID-19 by quarantined guests.
Department of Health and Human Services epidemiologist Dr Charles Alpren spelled it out at the hotel inquiry, saying the department received the first report of genomic analysis linking an infected staff member with infected guests back on May 30, and followed up with weekly reports and teleconferences all through June.
“These revealed that all sequenced cases that shared epidemiological links to the Rydges Hotel outbreak clustered together,’’ Dr Alpren said.
Yet for months, Premier Daniel Andrews refused to release this data to the public, insisting it belonged the Doherty Institute, and wasn’t his to share. His Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton backed him up on this claim.
READ ELLEN WHINNETT’S ANALYSIS IN FULL HERE
HOTEL CONCERNS ‘NOT SENT’ TO MIKAKOS
Health Minister Jenny Mikakos has told parliament that she was not briefed on emails sent by the Australian Medical Association in April raising concerns with the hotel quarantine scheme.
Ms Mikakos was asked during Question Time on Tuesday why she ignored the warnings, but said the letters were not sent directly to her.
“The issues that were raised in that email from a board member of the AMA were, as I understand, sent to an official in the department,” she said.
“It was not an email that was addressed to me, it was not an email that was brought to my attention and it was not an email that I was briefed on.
“I’ve only become aware of this email since media reports on it.
“I actually understand the contents of the email were suggestions rather than criticism.”
Ms Mikakos said the email included mentions of ‘green zones’, where there are intended to be no interactions with possible infections, and that these were already implemented by the time the message was delivered.
ADF SHOOTS DOWN DANIEL ANDREWS’ HOTEL QUARANTINE CLAIMS
The Defence Force COVID-19 task force chief has shot down repeated claims from Daniel Andrews that troops were not offered to help in Victoria’s quarantine hotels.
Lieutenant-General John Frewen has confirmed 100 personnel were put on standby in Victoria on the day national cabinet agreed to quarantine all travellers from overseas.
He has also explained how hundreds of troops assisted in hotels in Queensland and NSW, contradicting the Premier’s claim that the ADF only helped in “limited circumstances” elsewhere.
Mr Andrews sparked a war of words with the federal government last week when he said: “I think it is fundamentally incorrect to assert that there was hundreds of ADF staff on offer and somehow someone said no.”
The Premier refused to back down when Defence Minister Linda Reynolds weighed in to explain Defence’s efforts to assist, and he dismissed “anonymous” reports of Defence records detailing what help was available.
READ MORE ON VICTORIA’S CORONAVIRUS CRISIS