Coronavirus: infected worker moved between jobs

A worker who became infected with coronavirus while working in hotel quarantine was allowed to simultaneously work at an aged-care centre during Victoria’s second wave.

A worker who contracted coronavirus was among nine at the Grand Chancellor and Brady quarantine hotels in Melbourne who tested positive for the virus between July 27 and late August. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Tim Carrafa

A worker who became infected with coronavirus while working in hotel quarantine was allowed to simultaneously work shifts in an aged-care centre at the height of Victoria’s second wave, because the government “can’t reduce” worker movement “to zero”, ­according to Premier Daniel Andrews.

The incident occurred at a time when the Andrews government was shutting down entire industries and making it illegal for hundreds of thousands of Victorians to attend work in a bid to suppress the spread of the virus, which was out of control as a result of breaches three months earlier in the hotel quarantine program.

The Department of Health and Human Services confirmed to The Australian late on Friday that: “One hotel quarantine staff member thought to have acquired COVID-19 in an aged-care facility was working shifts at the facility and the Grand Chancellor Hotel.”

The worker was among nine at the Grand Chancellor and Brady quarantine hotels in Melbourne who tested positive for the virus between July 27 and late August — weeks after the Premier announced an inquiry into how two clusters of cases in hotel quarantine security guards had led to the second wave on June 30.

Corrections Victoria staff replaced private security guards and Victoria stopped taking international arrivals in late June, but the Grand Chancellor and Brady ­hotels continued to be used to house vulnerable positive cases and close contacts, including many from housing commission towers, who were unable to safely isolate at home.

Asked on Sunday why a government-subcontracted worker was allowed to move between hotel quarantine and aged care — now linked to 640 of the 787 deaths caused by Victoria’s second wave of coronavirus — Mr Andrews said he was not sure whether the person had worked any shifts in aged care while infectious.

“I would need to come back to you in terms of further details about that particular case, but the key point here is … we’re doing everything that we can to limit movement,” Mr Andrews said.

“Sometimes, you can’t get 100 per cent. You can’t reduce that to zero. But the key point there is whether the person was infectious. I don’t have that detail.”

“The program has been reset. That doesn’t happen overnight, and I dare say that in any workforce, there will always be … a very small number of people who for a period of time …, may have worked in their own transition period … at more than one place.”

Asked whether it had been reasonable for a government-subcontracted worker to be moving between two extremely vulnerable settings at a time when the government had stopped hundreds of thousands of other workers from going to work to limit the spread of the virus, Mr Andrews said: “Well I don’t know how many times they did that. I don’t know whether they were infectious.”

Victoria recorded 12 new cases of coronavirus on Sunday and one death, with the number of active cases steady since Saturday at 241 — the first time the number of ­active cases has not fallen since August 15.

Asked whether he was concerned Victoria’s fall in coronavirus numbers was stalling, Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton said: “Yeah, absolutely, and I think obviously it will be reflective of the fact that there were only a dozen cases that have completed their infectious ­period and are now no longer considered cases, and we’ve got 12 new ones, but we need to drive it down.”