New case of hotel quarantine transmission of coronavirus in Perth

Coronavirus has spread again through one of Australia’s quarantine hotels, with the virus detected after a man arrived from Colombia.

A new case of coronavirus has been transmitted from one traveller to another in hotel quarantine in Perth.

It happened at the Pan Pacific hotel in the CBD after a man from Colombia arrived in Western Australia via the United States on May 21.

Chief health officer Andy Robertson said that man tested positive for the virus on May 23.

A man in the adjoining room, who had arrived on May 16, was tested on day 13 of his quarantine stay and also returned a positive result.

He had the same strain as the man from Colombia, which indicated there had been transmission at the hotel.

Staff members and 12 people who had been staying on the floor but have since been released from quarantine have so far tested negative.

“So, it is just confined to that gentleman in the room next door,” Dr Robertson told reporters on Tuesday.

The virus spread at the Pan Pacific hotel. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Sarah Matray

“(The others) were some distance away so it’s fairly unlikely that they would have been infected, but we will be retesting them at day 17 and again at day 21 just to make sure as a precaution.”

A family of three, who were in a room opposite, remain in quarantine and have been moved to a new room.

It is the second recent case of transmission at the Pan Pacific after a security guard caught the virus and passed it on to two of his housemates.

Deputy chief health officer Robyn Lawrence, who runs the hotel quarantine system, said since a ventilation report was handed down authorities had worked with the participating hotels to confirm they had negative pressure rooms.

There was also an ongoing maintenance schedule in place, she said.

Chief health officer Andy Robertson said one traveller spread the virus to another. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Tony McDonough

“In addition, we continue to learn about hotel quarantine from all other cases around the country,” she told reporters.

“We recently made the change to the testing regime to ensure that we could pick up cases just like this.

“As a result of that change, I believe this is how we picked this case up on the day 13 testing so quickly and so early, and prevented that case being able to leave - potentially unknown to us with Covid - back out into the community.”

Dr Lawrence also noted the recent South Australian hotel case was at the end of a corridor, as was a previous case at Perth’s Mercure hotel.

That prompted West Australian authorities to last week agree on limiting the use of rooms at the end of corridors.

The two rooms involved in this outbreak were also at the end of a corridor, she added.

“So with that new process, which we agreed on Friday, in the future this also would be less likely to occur because we would have a different configuration of rooms,” she said.