NT declares Melbourne COVID-19 quarantine hotel Holiday Inn as a hot spot after cluster grows

Northern Territory health authorities have declared a single building in Melbourne as a hot spot, as quarantine hotel cluster grows to 8

NORTHERN Territory health authorities have declared a single building in Melbourne as a hot spot, effective 4pm ACST.

The building is the Holiday Inn near Melbourne Airport.

A coronavirus cluster at the hotel, which was being used to quarantine repatriated Australians, has grown to 8 active cases.

The NT chief health officer declared that as at 4pm anyone who had been inside the Holiday Inn would have to go into two weeks of quarantine if they arrived in the Territory.

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Cleaners are seen wearing full PPE while working at the disinfection of the Holiday Inn hotel on February 10, 2021 in Melbourne, Australia. (Photo by Diego Fedele/Getty Images)

Further, anyone who arrived in the Territory prior to the hot spot being called, and has been in the hotel at any point since February 5, must self-quarantine until they return a negative COVID-19 test.

The move to declare the hotel a hot spot comes in a seven day time frame where NT authorities declared 10 Melbourne suburbs as hot spots, revoked those, put in three more, and then this morning added another.

Before the current coronavirus situation in Melbourne, the Northern Territory’s hot spot policy has been to restrict travel from local government areas.

The current Melbourne hot spots, apart from the Holiday Inn, are the suburbs of Sunbury, Maidstone, Sunshine and Taylors Lakes.

“The decision to declare Sunbury as an additional COVID-19 hotspot is off the back of the three suburbs I declared on Monday and follows on from the initial case linked to what is now a small COVID-19 cluster,” NT chief health officer Dr Hugh Heggie said.

“I remain confident Victorian authorities have acted quickly and have continued their public health controls to limit the spread of COVID-19, and have identified several locations in Sunbury as exposure sites.

“Victoria are closely assessing their practices in quarantine facilities. Other returned travellers undertaking quarantine on the floor of the facility at the centre of this cluster are undertaking an additional 14 days of quarantine and there is a continued high rate of community testing as well as testing the close contacts and casual contacts.”