Coronavirus Australia: Hotel quarantine guards given diversity training, not infection control

A health department official working in Victoria’s hotel quarantine received no infection control training, an inquiry has heard.

Protective service officers leave Melbourne’s Brady Hotel, which is being used as a quarantine centre. Picture: David Geraghty

A health department official working in Victoria’s hotel quarantine received no infection control training — but did complete a lesson on diversity — an inquiry into the operation has heard.

“Everything I know about COVID-19 is from Channel 9 or the ABC,” Luke Ashford, who worked as an officer of the Department of Health and Human Services at Melbourne’s Stamford Plaza, said in a statement.

Mounting evidence of the failures of the state government-run program that unleashed Victoria’s coronavirus second wave played out at the inquiry on Friday, which heard tales of lax infection control and a security guard who was sent home early because he was tired from working at Coles.

It comes as Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews asked the state’s Department of Health and Human Services to prepare to publish genomic sequencing linking his government’s bungled hotel quarantine program to the state’s deadly second wave of coronavirus cases, after claiming for weeks that the data was not the department’s to release. .

Mr Ashford told the inquiry he had completed a one-hour lesson on how to use the COVID-19 app and a course on diversity and inclusion. “No other training or ­induction was given prior to commencing this first shift or subsequently,” he said.

“There was no training in infection control and I had no prior training from my previous roles.”

The inquiry has previously heard that 99 per cent of Victoria’s current cases of COVID-19 can be linked to outbreaks at the Stamford Plaza and Rydges on Swanston hotels.

Mr Ashford said despite having done “dangerous work” fighting fires and in the navy, he felt most at risk while in hotel quarantine, as DHHS was not able to provide a safe work environment.

He said he quit on June 18 as Victorian schools were reopening, telling the inquiry: “I didn’t want to be the guy that shut my daughter’s school down.”

Another witness, known only as Security 1, said he received adequate infection-control training before starting work but was concerned by staff working across hotels and in other jobs which he felt was “asking for trouble”.

He said one nurse was taking shifts at the Pullman Melbourne on Swanston hotel and Austin Hospital, and that on one occasion he had to send a guard home early because he was too tired to work.

“While I was working at Crowne Plaza I had to send a guard home as he was working 12-hour shifts for us in security but was also working some day shifts at Coles,” he said in his statement.

Security 1 said he was employed at hotel quarantine through Nu Force Security Group, which was subcontracted by ­Wilson Security, before completing stints at the Crowne Plaza and Pullman. A Wilson Security spokes­woman said guards were not permitted to work across multiple sites.

In another part of his statement, Security 1 was alerted to an incident involving a young family in hotel quarantine.

“I got a call from a guard saying there was a lot of yelling going on and they could hear a baby or an infant crying and screaming, the guard thinking that the child may have been struck,” he said.

“I went up with the shift supervisor, a DHHS officer, mental health nurse and another nurse to check on them,” he said.

The DHHS worker knocked on the door and was told by the father that the family needed two 15-minute breaks a day.

“But no check of the children — whether they showed signs of violence, was performed by the DHHS,” he said. “They assured the father that the family would get more breaks and that was it.”

Liliana Ratcliff, who completed quarantine at the Stamford Plaza, said guards would go from room to room to take guests for walks without changing personal protective equipment.

“That made me concerned because if they were to pick up something from another traveller, they would then give it to other travellers or to each other,” she said.