Backflip after Tasmanian outbreak blamed on illegal dinner party

Chief medical officer Brendan Murphy has retracted claims that a coronavirus outbreak among hospital workers started at an illegal dinner party.

Chief medical officer Brendan Murphy is having a very bad day when it comes to the sensational tale of an ‘illegal dinner party’ involving health workers in Tasmania.

In a statement, he’s now backflipped on his claims a COVID-19 cluster in the state was sparked by a group of health workers who may have taken an alternative approach to social distancing with the pizza night.

But he’s just revealed it was something somebody told him and it’s wrong.

“This morning in discussions with the New Zealand parliamentary committee I referred to a suggestion that a dinner party may have been the source of some of the transmission in the north-west Tasmania cluster of cases,’’ he said.

“Whilst this possibility had previously been mentioned to me, following investigations I am confident it has not occurred. Tasmanian officials are continuing their investigations.”

Prof Murphy’s claims of an illegal dinner party have made national headlines all day.

Chief Medical Officer Professor Brendan Murphy has backflipped on the claims. Picture: Mick Tsikas/AAP

He will front up for a live press conference in Canberra at 3.15 pm which promises to be awkward.

Earlier Tasmanian police said they would investigate the claim that an outbreak of coronavirus cases among healthcare workers in two Tasmanian hospitals is linked to an illegal dinner party.

At the time, Prof Murphy said the staff from the North West Regional Hospital and North West Private Hospital in Burnie had attended a dinner party.

“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. Most of them went to an illegal dinner party of medical workers, we think,” Dr Murphy told a New Zealand parliamentary committee on Tuesday.

The gathering was linked to more than 60 cases of coronavirus in the state including 45 health workers and nine hospital patients.

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Police outside the North West Regional Hospital in Burnie.

The two hospitals, which service about 20 per cent of the Tasmanian population, have been closed over the outbreak with patients moved to Mersey Community Hospital for treatment.

The outbreak has put about 5000 Tasmanians into quarantine — mostly hospital workers and their close contacts.

Tasmanian Premier Peter Gutwein said the police would investigate the claims made by Dr Murphy, but said at this stage the party allegations were a “rumour”.

“To be frank, Brendan (Murphy) was commenting on a rumour,” Mr Gutwein said, saying contact tracing had not clearly identified the source of the outbreak as a “dinner party of health workers”.

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Tasmanian Premier Peter Gutwein said allegations about an illegal party of hospital workers is a ‘rumour’. Picture Chris Kidd

But the Premier said the allegations were “serious” and said he had asked the Tasmanian Police to begin investigating today.

“We need to understand whether or not there is any strength to the rumour because, at the end of the day, I am certain that there are many hardworking health professionals on the northwest coast who feel that their reputations are being maligned … we need to understand exactly what's occurred here,” Mr Gutwein said.

He said measures being implemented across the state were working and he urged Tasmanians not to become “complacent”.

Dr Mark Veitch, the state’s director of Public Health, said the quarantined group include staff from both hospitals and their families, as well as patients who had passed through the hospital.

Dr Veitch said patients who had been discharged from “around March 27” would need to self-isolate for 14 days. People who visited the hospital briefly won’t be required to quarantine, but others who were close contacts of patients or workers will have already been contacted over the outbreak.

Authorities hope to reopen the hospitals tomorrow after they are cleaned.

Tasmania has a 150 cases of coronavirus.