Tasmania in the midst of ‘very desperate’ coronavirus debacle as cluster emerges

As the number of virus cases surge in Tasmania, Senator Jacqui Lambie says the situation in her home state could "get a lot worse yet".

Senator Jacqui Lambie has warned Tasmania’s coronavirus debacle could “get a lot worse yet”, saying the state is in a “very desperate” situation.

Speaking on Today this morning, Senator Lambie told hosts Karl Stefanovic and Allison Langdon Tasmania would either “come out OK or it’s just going to go downhill really, really quickly like it already is”.

The state has found itself in the middle of a national COVID-19 debacle with accusations of ill-equipped hospital staff and a rumoured “illegal dinner party”, with up to 5000 people forced into quarantine and two hospitals closed down.

“This is a really horrific situation to be in right now,” Senator Lambie said, adding it would be revealed in the next seven to ten days if Tasmania could get through the crisis “by the tip of our nose”.

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Senator Jacqui Lambie says the coronavirus debacle in Tasmania ‘scares the hell out of us’. Picture: Channel 9

“I think that scares the hell out of us. We don’t know whether we have all the resources that we need down here,” she said.

“This could just turn really, really nasty. If it hasn’t already, it can get a lot worse yet.”

Anger was sparked over the outbreak among health workers when Australia’s chief medical officer Professor Brendan Murphy suggested yesterday that the infected professionals may have come into contact with the virus at an “illegal party”. He later retracted his comments after the theory was dismissed as a rumour.

Prof Murphy clarified that contact tracing hadn’t yet linked the virus cluster to such a party, but police are investigating the claims.

Another leading health authority has suggested hospital staff may have been poorly equipped with personal protective equipment during the beginning of the outbreak, which could have contributed to the spread.

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Patients transferred from the North West Regional Hospital in Burnie to the Mersey Community Hospital in Latrobe. Picture: Patrick Gee

Authorities this week closed down the North West Regional Hospital in Burnie and the North West Private Hospital after a cluster of more than 60 coronavirus cases was identified at the facilities. Of those, 45 were staff. The two hospitals service about 20 per cent of Tasmania’s population.

“We thought we were doing really well in the last week and then we had a cluster of 49 cases in a hospital in Tasmania just over the weekend,” Prof Murphy said yesterday.

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Tasmanian Premier Peter Gutwein said claims about a party with hospital workers is a ‘rumour’. Picture: Chris Kidd

Australian Medical Association's Tasmanian branch president Professor John Burgess suggested the outbreak may have been linked to issues to do with personal protective equipment (PPE) faced by the state in the early stages of the pandemic.

In an interview with ABC TV, Prof Burgess said staff “training and support” around PPE needed to be improved and said supply of the vital equipment was an ongoing global issue.

He warned the extent of the outbreak in Tasmania would not be known for at least 10 days as those possibly exposed in the outbreak were in quarantine.

Prof Burgess also said containment includes reducing the “risk of droplet spread which can go up to 1.5-2m when someone coughs or sneezes”.

But he pointed out that a droplet on a surface can remain infectious “for many hours or even days” after it’s expelled and some of these issues were still being overlooked.

“I think from the training point of view, no one really can properly train for what we've seen happen around the world and in this state because the magnitude of this contagion is such that it is something which is unprecedented … it’s a once in a century event.”

Tasmania has recorded 151 cases of coronavirus.