James Campbell: Once again we must ask questions about our hotel quarantine program

As we wait and see what becomes of this latest COVID case we — once again — need to quickly reassess what has gone wrong in hotel quarantine.

It could have been worse.

Perth residents are spending a week at home over one case.

We should rejoice that our authorities seem to have suddenly become more relaxed. Or appear to have.

It’s hard not to wonder however if they fear that after what Victorians went through last winter the public response to a lockdown over a single case could not be guaranteed.

Listening to the Premier on Wednesday night it is clear he thinks the chances that this worker has not infected anyone else are remote, especially as according to Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton, he had “a high viral load”.

So here we go again. The masks are back indoors. So too are the lines at testing centres.

We don’t know yet but it’s clear the man is likely to have caught one of the more infectious new variants – the high viral load is a bit of a give-away here.

Premier Daniel Andrews seems to be confident this worker has not infected anyone else.

Given this increased ease of transmission it will be interesting to see if we are as lucky this time as we were with the Black Rock outbreak.

The experience from overseas does not fill you with confidence here.

In the meantime there is nothing we can do but wait. And while we wait we need to quickly reassess what needs to be done to improve hotel quarantine.

Because clearly something has gone wrong again, both with this case and in the case of room-to-room transmission.

Should the workers involved be permanently isolated?

Should we consider moving the program out of the middle of our capital cities?

Should we consider suspending the program until everyone working in it has been vaccinated?

Clearly something has gone wrong again in quarantine hotels

We know from the bitter experience of last year that Victoria’s health authorities have hair triggers which is why everything should be on the table.

In the meantime we should be thankful we haven’t been thrown straight back into lockdown. And keep our fingers crossed for the next few days.