Workers infected with COVID-19 after Victoria’s hotel quarantine scheme ended

After months of dodging questions, the Victorian Government has finally admitted the truth about its infamous “hot hotel” scheme.

After days of stonewalling, the Victorian Government has finally admitted that police, cleaners and medical staff working at Melbourne’s “hot” COVID-19 hotels have continued to contract the virus after the quarantine scheme was shut down.

But they are insisting it is more likely the workers contracted the virus outside of the work setting, despite providing no evidence to support this claim.

The health hotels are only used for COVID-19 patients, not international travellers, after Melbourne’s own scheme was shut down in July and international planes were diverted to other states.

As a result, they are described as “hot” because all of the people in the rooms are confirmed COVID suffers and the medical staff and cleaning at the site has been billed as practising a high level of awareness over infection control.

However, a total of nine people who have worked at the health hotels have tested positive for COVID-19 since July 27. There are currently no active cases, with the last positive case in late August.

RELATED: Follow our live coronavirus coverage

Protective service officers leave the Brady Hotel in Melbourne CBD. Picture: NCA NewsWire/David Geraghty

“One was a DHHS staff member and one was a Victoria Police member – neither has been assessed as having acquired COVID-19 at a health hotel,” a spokeswoman said.

“Two were Alfred Health staff and five were Spotless staff – acquisition has been assessed as most likely occurring from community transmission outside of the health hotels.”

The “hot” hotels were used to care for people infected with coronavirus who could not safely recuperate at home, including medical staff that didn’t want to infect their partners who also might be doctors, and the families moved out of the public housing towers earlier this year during the second wave outbreak.

The Victorian Government shutdown the main hotel quarantine scheme earlier this year after the virus escaped and infected security guards who unwittingly spread it throughout Melbourne.

Genomic testing later confirmed that the security guards had in fact contracted the virus from families staying in hotel quarantine after returning home from overseas.

These infections quickly spread among private security working at the hotel before ultimately spreading across and the state and leading to over 700 deaths and 18,000 infections.

RELATED: PM’s move after damning evidence

Premier Daniel Andrews was asked on the weekend if he was concerned that casual and contract workers were still being employed to run hotel quarantine. Picture: Darrian Traynor/Getty Images

The Victorian Government has not explained how they arrived at the conclusion that the workers at the “hot” hotel contracted the virus in the community and not at work where they had daily contact with COVID patients.

“Staff safety is paramount, especially in health hotels where positive cases are accommodated. We maintain strict public health and infection control protocols and staff are required to isolate where testing positive for coronavirus until cleared to return to work,” a spokeswoman said.

Several journalists accused the Victorian Government of stonewalling over the infections, including The Saturday Paper’s Osman Faruqi, who broke the original story that 12 government notifications had been made of positive cases among staff in the hotels, including private contractors, but none had been publicly disclosed including in some cases to staff who worked there.

RELATED: Huge claim about botched hotel scheme

Breaking: Government confirms 9 staff working at quarantine hotels have tested positive for Covid since end of July. This includes DHHS staff, VicPol, Alfred Health staff and FIVE Spotless contract workers.

Government says “community transmission most likely”

— Osman Faruqi (@oz_f) September 29, 2020

“It’s fairly extraordinary that the government line is that workers operating a hotel where every guest is COVID-19 positive caught the virus from elsewhere rather than from their workplace. We know doctors on Covid wards weren’t being fit tested until recently. What’s happening here?,” Faruqi tweeted.

“Every single story I’ve done about workplace infections in the past few weeks has been met with denial and stonewalling by the government and the companies involved. Despite workers begging for transparency on the risks at their worksite. Every story has held up.

“It’s crazy workers in all sorts of environments – teachers, doctors, nurses, cleaners, meat workers, labourers – are being asked to go into work everyday and are not being told about infections on their worksite. The biggest OHS issue in the world right now, with community risk.”

The Australian’s Rachel Baxendale said following Faruqi’s report she put questions to the Victorian Premier and the government but did not receive a satisfactory answer.

When Premier Daniel Andrews was asked on Saturday if he was concerned that casual and contract workers from companies including Spotless were still being employed to run hotel quarantine, Mr Andrews pledged to get back to the reporter with more information.

“This is a program that’s been reset,” Mr Andrews said.

“It’s a different program in that it is not dealing with international travellers, in the main … leave that with me and I will have someone come back to you.”

But a government spokesman later provided a statement which provided no answers to the question of how many people working in the “hot” hotels had tested positive until July.