Anger at ‘leadership debacle’ in wake of Victorian Covid-19 outbreak

For months experts have been calling for changes to Australia’s hotel quarantine and they say there’s been a “leadership debacle” at the heart of the system.

Victoria’s coronavirus outbreak should be a major wake-up call for governments and have highlighted a major “leadership debacle”, one expert says.

Frustratingly for millions of residents who have been forced into their fourth lockdown in a year, the latest outbreak in Victoria has been linked to a Wollert man who contracted Covid-19 while in hotel quarantine in South Australia.

It follows other quarantine breaches in NSW this year and in Western Australia, which sparked two short lockdowns.

Experts have been warning for months that changes to better address airborne spread of the virus in hotel quarantine facilities are needed.

The approach to hotel ventilation among states can vary widely as there is no national standard.

“It’s a leadership debacle that we still have no national standards for quarantine,” Melbourne University epidemiologist Professor Tony Blakely told news.com.au.

He noted that Australia had regular audits for superannuation funds and food preparation businesses but this did not exist in the quarantine sector.

“It beggars belief that we still don’t have quality standards for CBD hotel quarantine that are monitored and enforced by an independent agency of some sort.

“Ventilation is critical here, it’s mindblowing that we still don’t have that.”

Professor Michael Toole, an epidemiologist at the Burnet Institute who worked at the US Centres for Disease Control (CDC) for 10 years, has also raised concerns about the lack of a national standard.

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Melbourne’s usually busy Bourke Street Mall was deserted on Friday as Victorians bunker down for a seven-day lockdown. Picture: William West/AFP

Ironically Victoria’s quarantine system has undergone one of the strictest audits. Every hotel room in its system has been analysed to ensure there is “negative pressure”, which means air flows into hotel rooms when the door is opened, rather than outwards into hallways.

In South Australia, authorities have audited a dedicated medi-hotel for Covid-positive patients but other hotels in the system haven’t been assessed. Western Australia has done a ventilation audit and is in the process of implementing changes.

It’s unclear whether other states have done audits.

SA Health released a report into the Playford medi-hotel breach on Thursday and found the most likely cause of the Melbourne man’s infection, was due to “close timing of doors opening and closing between adjacent rooms” after the delivery of food.

It said there were adequate ventilation levels in the corridor but potential aerosol transmission may have occurred after the man was exposed to potentially contaminated air in the corridor or it entered the man’s room.

The report recommended changes including heating, ventilation and airconditioning specialists be consulted about the potential benefit to telling guests to close balcony doors or windows prior to opening their room door.

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The Playford Hotel in Adelaide where a Melbourne man was infected with Covid-19 while undergoing hotel quarantine. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Brenton Edwards

It also suggests guests who are close contacts of positive cases and more likely to develop infection, should not be placed next to other lower risk guests, and that authorities should investigate the possibility of putting higher risk patients on the same floor.

Education for guests about safe opening of doors and the wearing of masks was also recommended, as was further testing for guests after they leave quarantine.

The latest report follows an earlier overhaul of South Australia’s system last year following a quarantine breach that led to the Parafield cluster. This breach was linked to infected security guards and changes included moving Covid-19 positive guests to a dedicated hotel.

Prof Blakely said the most recent outbreak should be a “a major wakeup call to state and federal governments”.

“If you use CBD hotels and people get infected in those hotels in their last couple of days of stay, and go out in the community with the Indian variant, what do you expect?”

He said more facilities like Howard Springs, located on the outskirts of Darwin in the Northern Territory, were needed.

This facility allows people to live in units surrounded by fresh air, which means that if the virus does escape from one of the units, it is expelled into the air and quickly dissipates.

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Staff at the Howard Springs quarantine centre on Darwin's outskirts. Picture: Glen Campbell/NCA NewsWire

“People coming in with potentially more infectious variants need to go to Howard Springs-like facilities,” Prof Blakely said.

“It will take time to build but we need to get underway.”

Victoria and Queensland have submitted plans for similar facilities in Mickleham in Melbourne’s north, and the regional Queensland town of Toowoomba in state’s south, but these have yet to gain backing from the Federal Government.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has described Victoria’s plan, which would not see construction begin until September, as a “well thought through proposal” but said other options were also being considered.

“We’ve only had it a few weeks but we’re working through it with them in good faith,” Mr Morrison told 3AW last Thursday.

However, Mr Morrison has been critical of the Queensland proposal and said the state government would not reveal how much the facility would cost, or whether the state intended to run it.

“They won’t tell us whether, on top of that, whether it’s being in addition to bringing Australians home, so supplementing what is already being done, or is to replace it,” Mr Morrison told ABC Radio Brisbane last week.

“These are the things we’ve been asking for for ages.”

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