How Ms Frankie outbreak was chased down will help us crush latest outbreak
The owners of Ms Frankie have urged people to put safety first after they recover from Covid and try to rebuild their business.
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The “battered and bruised” owners of Ms Frankie say they are relieved their best practice Covid safe protocols helped run the cases to ground quickly.
Co-owners Wani Sakellaropoulos and Melinda Aloisio are now out of quarantine, having tested positive to Covid. A total of 10 staff were infected, their head chef hospitalised on oxygen and some passed it on to close contacts.
A Go Fund Me campaign has been launched to support the business which will receive some government funding but faces a shortfall.
Although devastating, Ms Sakellaropoulos and Ms Aloisio told the Herald Sun they were comforted by the support they and staff had received.
“We’re a family and we see our customers and local community like our family as well, so our focus has been on those we love and who are dear to us and making sure everyone is safe and well,” they said.
“The entire Ms Frankie crew is just so blessed and grateful for the outpouring of support from everyone and we can’t wait to welcome people back and to get back to doing what we love and do best.”
The pair said they were concerned for staff and customers, some they didn’t know, affected by the virus.
“We are thinking about you daily. We can’t wait until the negative results start rolling through so then we can stop focusing on the health and we can start to consider the roll out of the business.”
Ms Sakellaropoulos’ sister Zoe Passarella launched the Go Fund Me page to support the business.
“We were all concerned that there might be stigma attached to being an exposure site and would people stay away?” she said.
“I set the target deliberately low at $1000 as it was designed to lift their spirits”.
She said like many small businesses each lockdown has taken a cumulative toll.
“I feel like with each successive lockdown it has crushed a little bit of their spirit. They are very positive and optimistic people but this is multifaceted. Loss of income, personal guilt.
“They are strong and resilient women and I know they and the rest of the team will come out of this OK.”
Covid response commander Jeroen Weimar publicly praised Ms Frankie for good QR coding and record keeping. He also has phoned them personally.
“They’ve worked incredibly hard in the restaurant and we are supportive and recognised the pressure on the business as it dealt with the outbreak,” Mr Weimar said.
“They have handled themselves in an outstanding fashion throughout this and their excellent work on QR codes and compliance has enabled us to make swift progress.”
The couple is drawing some comfort from the vote of confidence which they describe as a “beacon of hope”.
“We’ve always put safety first and so we were grateful that our COVIDsafe protocols have been able to help the Government get on top of this quickly,” they said.
The co-owners have had their first Pfizer vaccines and have had mild symptoms. A niece living with them, who works as a bar tender at Ms Frankie and is not eligible to be vaccinated, was unwell for days after being infected.
You can support Ms Frankie by visiting here.
FASTER, QUICKER, SICKER: THE LESSONS IN CRUSHING DELTA
The speed at which Covid-19’s Delta variant spread through Ms Frankie’s restaurant is unlike anything Victoria’s health investigators had ever seen before.
But so was the way the community, the restaurant and health investigators handled the outbreak, rewriting the playbook on how to successfully suppress the supercharged strain of coronavirus.
“The Ms Frankie’s story is very specific because you get two double effects,” lead contact tracer Prof Paul Johnson said.
“You have people from AAMI and the MCG coming there on different nights.
“And then you’ve got staff getting infected, infecting other staff, and then the staff infecting other people.
“It is a perfect storm.”
MS FRANKIE CASES SUDDENLY EXPLODED
Ms Frankie was just one of dozens of places a sports-mad Victorian remembered visiting in the days after watching Geelong down Carlton on July 10.
Despite previous assumptions of Covid-19 the fan had somehow caught its Delta variant in the open spaces of the MCC – and now contact tracers were desperate to find out everywhere he may have unwittingly passed it on.
Compared to some of the other places he’d visited – including massive sporting events and packed indoor bars – the popular Cremorne Italian restaurant didn’t jump out as the greatest threat.
Still, when he told one interviewer of a dinner he’d enjoyed with 12 mates at Ms Frankie on July 13 a second contact tracer checked the man’s QR check-in records – which were meticulous, providing the exact time he ate.
Even more importantly, the Ms Frankie records were just as thorough, almost instantly providing the contacts of 180 others also in the restaurant at the same time.
By the time the four-hour interview was over Ms Frankie was already listed as a potential exposure site and its Tuesday night diners were being asked to isolate.
But with no other cases linked to Ms Frankie and the North Eastern Public Health Unit’s 230-staff already overrun chasing down the contacts of cases at major city gatherings, Prof Johnson asked if any another tracing unit could help keep an eye on the restaurant.
When the 35-member Grampians Public Health Unit offered to oversee Ms Frankie nobody realised just what they were in for.
“At the beginning we were thinking it might be one or two cases, because one of the MCG people went to Ms Frankie,” Prof Johnson said.
“But what actually happened was that person then infected one of the staff, that member of staff then infected other staff, and then those staff infected other patrons over a couple of days.
“We then had this exploding event and suddenly they are dealing with a really large outbreak.
“It was like a hospital handpass.”
As her Ballarat-based team began tracking down exactly who was in Ms Frankie on July 13 and placing them in quarantine GPHU clinical director Assoc Prof Rosemary Adrich received several surprises.
The first was very welcome. The management of Ms Frankie had been amazingly diligent in its use of check-in data, staff lists and everything else that made finding contacts a dream.
But as they checked in on those contacts a flood of new discoveries was less welcome.
On July 16 two of Ms Frankie’s staff and a patron were confirmed to have caught Covid-19 from the original diner, tipping Melbourne into lockdown the next day as investigators caught a glimpse of how easily Delta was spreading.
“We started to realise how high-risk it was when we worked hard to get people tested within 72 hours and a number turned up positive,” Assoc Prof Adrich said.
“They might not have had symptoms yet, but they still turned up positive.
“In the MCG we had tens of thousands of people exposed and we put them in quarantine, but relatively few ended up becoming positive.
“AAMI was a few more, but we are still not talking one in six – which is what happened at Ms Frankie’s.”
North Eastern Public Health Unit was also being surprised by a stream of new cases alerts among residents living within the postcodes it oversees, as well as a pattern that began to emerge.
“They tended to have a certain suburb mix because they had been to the MCG and probably walked to the MCG or taken the tram there,” Prof Johnson said.
“And you find that every time you get another case – and they were coming thick and fast – that the first question is ‘have you been to Ms Frankie’s?’ And they say ‘yes, I was there’.
“We were looking with amazement at how many cases Ms Frankie’s generated because nobody knew it would generate that many.”
More worryingly, many of the new cases had been to Ms Frankie on July 14 or 15 – they now had people catching Covid in the restaurant over three days.
A further scan of the restaurant’s records revealed another 150 people had eaten at Ms Frankie’s on those days, prompting the number of households in quarantine to multiply.
Fortunately, Ms Frankie had strong QR data for all days, earning the praise of everyone involved in trying to overcome Victoria’s Delta threat.
“Compare that with other people we can’t name – who might fax you a handwritten piece of paper and you can’t read the mobile number – that is what we have been used to,” Prof Johnson conceded.
“With these high-quality, really organised outfits like Ms Frankie, it is possible to catch up because of their organisation.”
INFORMATION IS LIFE SAVING
During previous clusters tracing interviews cases have been able to name friends and family they dined with, but identifying strangers on other tables has been a constant battle.
Assoc Prof Adrich said the thorough use of QR codes overcame that issue at Ms Frankie, identifying 330 customers.
Facing not only the Delta variant, but the unusually complex overlapping movements of Melbourne sports fans which saw some attending up to four different exposure sites, the information was life saving.
“There were a bunch of people who went to the MCG who also went to the Wallabies. Some of them were already infectious by the time they went to see the Wallabies, and some of them had gone to Ms Frankie and the other sporting events,” Assoc Prof Adrich said.
“It has been a challenge to know which it was that gave them what they have got.”
As they untangled a “three-dimensial web” of movements linking the Ms Frankie customers to the other clusters now breaking out across Victoria, the tracers were able to place 2314 restaurant primary close contacts in quarantine and contain the outbreak.
As case after case emerged among those who had been in the restaurant and their families – with up to one in six people exposed while dining actually catching Covid – health experts were stunned by just how more infectious the attack rate of Delta was compared to the virus they battled in 2020.
Whereas the original Wild Wuhan strain took five days to infect the next generation of cases, the Delta in Ms Frankie was making people infectious and seeding a new generation of cases within 48 hours.
“There was lots of inconvenience, but what we found in doing the work with the Ms Frankie’s clientele is that the people themselves were extraordinarily co-operative and supportive, and appreciate that what they are doing by being in quarantine has really protected Victoria,” Prof Johnson said.
“The timing of the lockdown was absolutely perfect. It gave us a little look to realise it was a hugely expanding problem.
“There have been super spreader events before, but I just noticed the speed.
“When you start contact tracing you ring up the family who had dinner three days ago (and) they are all sick already.
“We see more super spreader events but, most of all, we see much more complete spread in households – pretty much everyone gets it.
“I think it would be better called Covid-21, not Covid-19.”
For Assoc Prof Adrich the rapid response, record keeping, and the timing and adherence of lockdown restrictions showed how the Delta variant can be defeated in even the most dangerous settings.
“This has rewritten the Covid response books because everything has to happen faster – much faster,” she said.
“We know it infects faster; we know people become infectious faster; we know people get symptoms faster; we know the data shows it is faster, quicker, sicker.
“We knew we had to get our skates on.”
And there is only one place the Ballarat-based health investigator wants to celebrate when she gets the chance:
“Hopefully before too long patrons will be able to enjoy the fine high quality restaurant that we understand Ms Frankie’s to be.
“I will certainly go there for a meal one day.”
MS FRANKIE OWNERS SAY SUPPORT A BEACON OF HOPE
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