Coronavirus: NSW Police investigating unvaccinated airport driver at centre of outbreak

NSW Police are urgently investigating the case at the centre of Sydney’s latest Covid-19 outbreak.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian during a COVID-19 update in Sydney. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Dylan Coker

NSW Police are urgently investigating the case at the centre of Sydney’s latest Covid-19 outbreak, following revelations the inter­national aircrew driver who tested positive had not been vaccinated.

The 60-year-old man was ­employed by a private limousine company to transport commercial aircrew who had arrived at Sydney Airport from the US.

The positive result left one question to be asked of state health authorities on Thursday: why had he not received the jab?

“It is not mandatory,” a NSW Health spokesman said. “People are allowed to do it (drive aircrew) when they are not vaccinated.”

Premier Gladys Berejiklian said only “strong recommendations” were in place for transport workers to be vaccinated, blaming the “national cabinet process” for not giving state authorities “the green light to mandate that”.

Faruq Talukder, owner of Sydney Limousines, another company engaged to transport international arrivals, said it was “not in our ­control” whether his drivers were vaccinated against Covid.

“Most of the drivers we have are working as contractors,” he said. “Some of them are vaccinated and some of them are not, I think.”

But the Transport Worker’s Union said it was a “gaping hole in biosecurity”, citing concerns that private vehicles transporting flight crew were not subject to the regulated hygienic cleaning program of those carrying passengers.

“We understand that no real protocols are in place for flight crew transport, despite the federal government being responsible for quarantine,” the union’s NSW secretary Richard Olsen said.

“The Covid infection of drivers transporting international flight crew shows huge gaps in the rules surrounding Covid safety for transport workers, and subsequently biosecurity for all Australians,” he added.

Meanwhile, NSW Health said its Covid infection prevention advice was “consistent for those in contact with international passengers and international flight crew”.

NSW Police are investigating the incident, specifically whether the driver was wearing a mask.

The transport worker returned a positive test on June 15, but chief health officer Kerry Chant said he could have been infectious with the Delta variant since June 11.

She said health authorities were unsure how the man contracted the virus, but the “obvious ­hypothesis” is that he caught it from the US aircrew.

“That strain does not match anything that’s been uploaded in Australia at this time,” Dr Chant said. “But it does match perfectly a sequence that’s been uploaded from the US, so that fits with that plausible hypothesis.”

UNSW epidemiologist Raina MacIntyre said the strain was the “most contagious of all the variants that are known to date”.

“It’s (about) 60 per cent more contagious than the (UK) variant, which is 100 per cent more contagious than the one that caused Melbourne’s second wave.”

She added that one person with the Delta variant was likely to ­infect five to seven other people.

The driver’s wife has since tested positive for the virus, along with a 70-year-old woman who was a close contact at the Belle Cafe in Vaucluse. Another case was detected in Castle Hill in Sydney’s northwest, but Dr Chant said health authorities were “still determining whether it is a false positive or an old case, as the viral load in his system was very low”.

The health department has released a series of potential exposure sites, including venues across Sydney’s eastern suburbs, inner west and Hills district.

South Australia and Tasmania both closed their border to anyone who had visited an exposure site in NSW, and Queenslanders were told not to travel to Sydney.