Hopes new quarantine program will beat UK Covid

A week after boasting about the state’s hotel quarantine program, Daniel Andrews says it needs to be overhauled to protect against the “wildly infectious” UK variant.

Victoria will build a new outdoor quarantine facility to deal with the “wildly infectious” UK variant of COVID-19, despite other states successfully containing dozens of cases within hotels.

A week after boasting the state’s hotel quarantine had been described as “gold standard”, Daniel Andrews said on Tuesday the system needed to be overhauled to protect against the mutant variant.

The Herald Sun can reveal there have been 56 cases of the UK variant in quarantine hotels in other states — including 25 in NSW without any breaches — and only three in the community.

Quarantine workers in both Queensland and WA contracted the UK variant, sparking snap lockdowns. But the Brisbane cleaner spread it only to her partner, despite being infectious in the community for up to five days, while none of more than 500 close and casual contacts of the Perth security guard tested positive.

The Victorian health department did not respond on Tuesday when asked how many cases of the UK variant had been recorded in quarantine hotels, but the Holiday Inn outbreak — which caused the state’s five-day lockdown — has ballooned to 19 cases.

A guests at The Holiday inn on Flinders Lane had to be evacuated. Picture: David Crosling

Mr Andrews said last week Victoria’s system was “one of the best” and was being copied by other states.

But he said on Tuesday the state would now “get on and build” a village of outdoor cabins, with authorities scoping sites near Tullamarine and Avalon airports.

“We have to change as the virus changes,” the Premier said. “It’s nimble, it changes, and our response has to also.”

While Scott Morrison said he would work with Victoria on its proposal for “supplementary” quarantine capacity, he pointed out that other states were successfully using hotels. “In seven other states and territories, they’ve had great success in managing that in-flow and also preventing breaches and, where breaches occur, their systems have been very strong,” the Prime Minister said.

“(The NSW government) operated hotel quarantine at triple the capacity of when Victoria was actually open, and they’ve been able to do that quite successfully.”

It came as 31 people — 13 COVID-positive and 18 suspected cases — were moved from the “hot” Holiday Inn quarantine hotel in the CBD to the Pullman in Albert Park after a water leak damaged the building.

The evacuation is expected to take two days as guests, some who donned plastic garbage bags to protect their privacy, are carefully relocated one traveller, or room, at a time.

The Pullman was used as an Australian Open quarantine hotel, but has been overhauled to house infected guests.

A new poll by research firm RedBridge found 48 per cent of Australians thought people returning from overseas presented too much of a COVID-19 risk, compared to 34.4 per cent who said they didn’t and 17.6 per cent who were unsure.

Staff at Howard Springs quarantine centre on Darwin's outskirts.

Mr Andrews said the new facility would be based on the Howard Springs centre in the Northern Territory, which state officials would visit “as soon as is practicable”.

He said it would “maybe not entirely but in significant part” replace inner-city hotels to quarantine arrivals. “It’s just a matter of how big it is and the more precise details of where — but Avalon and Melbourne airports are standout candidates,” Mr Andrews said.

It will likely include single-storey, cabin-style buildings with separate bathrooms and ventilation systems.

Mr Andrews said the argument for a separate quarantine facility was “compelling”, despite having raised concerns in recent weeks about staffing issues and costs of such a facility.

Australian National University infectious diseases expert Professor Peter Collignon said it was “a good idea, in general, it obviously works”. But he warned the government needed get the “basics” right on infection control.

State opposition spokesman Tim Smith said the move was “more about spin and distraction than it is about sound public policy”.

“I can see the plausible arguments about housing people outside of hotels; however, it has worked perfectly well in Sydney … therefore the NSW government is doing something better to manage hotel quarantine than the Victorian officials are,” Mr Smith said.

With planning still under way, the cost and build timeline of the facility is unclear, but Mr Andrews said it could be repurposed later for emergency accommodation for bushfires and other disasters.

Avalon Airport is being considered as potential site. Picture: Alison Wynd

ANALYSIS: COVID VILLAGES ARE A STEP IN RIGHT DIRECTION

Coronavirus moves fast, whether it be the original Chinese strain or the more virulent UK or South African variants, and governments must move even faster to get ahead of the threat.

Yet that has not routinely happened and, in the year since COVID-19 washed onto our shores, the opportunity to transition to purpose-built, mass quarantine centres away from our capital cities has been ignored or overlooked.

Even the Howard Springs facility in the Northern Territory, which houses up to 850 returned travellers and has never had an infection breach, is only now being significantly ramped up.

Victoria has been subjected to the worst impacts of lockdowns in Australia and the deaths of more than 800 people as a result of repeated city hotel quarantine failures.

The need for regional quarantine, removed from the millions of citizens across greater Melbourne and the vital economy a metropolis represents, has been especially pressing.

The Herald Sun has led calls for regional and remote quarantine, serviced by a live-in workforce, much like the fly-in-fly-out mining sector, and last week raised the potential to use Avalon Airport.

Herald Sun editorial on January 15.

Herald Sun editorial on February 9.

Daniel Andrews on Tuesday confirmed Avalon and some other sites in Victoria were actively being assessed and regional quarantine in some form would be built as a matter of urgency.

Avalon makes eminent sense, obviously with its international airport, its relative isolation and 1753ha size with air and road access to hospitals in Melbourne and Geelong.

The commitment to regional quarantine is a welcome move from the Andrews government to drastically reduce the exposure Melbourne and this state have to ongoing, sporadic and destructive lockdowns.

Despite the Premier’s comments lauding Victoria’s quarantine system just a week ago, the regional reset to take much of the quarantine load is an admission city hotels are not fit for purpose and their emergency-response use-by-date has well expired.

What also needs to occur, again, after the Herald Sun successfully campaigned for mandatory pre-flight COVID checks for returning travellers, is for the Morrison government to insist those Australian and permanent residents seeking to fly back strictly isolate in the 72 hours between tests and flights from overseas hot spots.

With vaccines to be rolled out from next week, continual tightening of protections wherever possible remains our best and only defence.

– Mark Dunn