Hotel quarantine: System flawed on every level – we need a fix, fast

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Daniel Pockett

Any Victorian holding the belief that the Andrews government has finally fixed hotel quarantine and the program is being properly managed needs to think again.

Dozens of confidential documents obtained by The Australian provide unparalleled insights into the daily operation of the troubled system, reveal the deeper story ­behind this year’s outbreaks, and indicate a lack of transparency from health officials.

The alleged conduct of the ­senior infection, prevention and control officers, quite frankly, beggars belief. It represents not just appalling optics but poor leadership, and will deeply irritate Victorians who have followed the rules and taken collective pride in their response to the pandemic.

Read the full list of hotel quarantine incident reports here

COVID-19 Quarantine Vic­toria says its policy is not to discipline staff for breaches, but to counsel employees. It says the IPC leaders have been counselled. This initial response appears ­highly inadequate. Political reality suggests tougher action will ­follow.

Then there’s the pathology ­assistant who decided it was fine to vape inside a quarantine hotel, proving governments can make all the structural improvements they like, but they will always be susceptible, to put it politely, to human misjudgments.

And what about the man known as “nebuliser guy”, the ­father maligned across suburbia and the regions for being allegedly responsible for the outbreak that caused the state’s third lockdown?

Referring to his use of a nebuliser in his room, Brett Sutton said in February that “we think the ­exposures are all to that event, the use of the nebuliser, which then meant the virus was carried out into the corridor” and exposed quarantine workers and another resident.

But a confidential report, never released by the government, ­reveals the virus first escaped into the corridor during the lengthy swabbing of an unmasked woman in an open doorway, not from the room of the man using a nebuliser.

The virus, “previously contained” in her room, was blown down the corridor by airconditioning before “pooling outside the door” of the room 322/323 where the man with the nebuliser was staying with his partner and infant.

The report says one of the adults then caught the virus while picking up breakfast or taking out rubbish. The use of the nebuliser, the report says, did aid viral transmission in the room and pushed it back into the corridor, infecting food and beverage workers, but would nebuliser guy or his partner have caught the virus if it hadn’t been for the prolonged open-door swabbing and the airconditioning blowing the virus to his door?

Here’s a few telling clues to the answer. The same report calls for a thorough review of swabbing, finding the lengthy open-door procedure “allows the virus to ­potentially spill out into the corridor”. Moreover, a separate confidential “rapid review” into outbreaks at three quarantine ­hotels, also unreleased by the ­government, recommends an end to the practice and for residents to be tested inside their room with the door closed.

The review observes that the general building standards applying to hotels with respect to airflow were not designed to meet the extra infection and prevention control requirements arising from their use as quarantine facilities.

That said, it is extraordinary that outside air running into the Park Royal Hotel at Melbourne Airport was switched off every night to “save energy”.

Reading through the reports, it is not hard to see why Victoria has asked the Morrison government to pony up the cash to build a new quarantine facility.

It is time the two governments got on with it and publicly committed to fast tracking the new ­facility. Victorians have been through enough.