Coronavirus: Police probe mystery UK variant spread

Authorities are investigating how the UK variant of COVID-19 was spread from a returned traveller in hotel quarantine to a cleaner, her partner and two other guests.

Guests in quarantine at Hotel Grand Chancellor getting transported in ambulances to other hotels. Pics Tara Croser.

Queensland police and health authorities are leading a renewed investigation into how the highly contagious UK variant of COVID-19 was spread from a returned traveller in hotel quarantine to a cleaner, her partner and two other hotel guests.

They will probe whether the hotel’s air-conditioner or an inadvertent lapse in the use of personal protective equipment led to transmission of the virus. Genome sequencing conducted by health officers on six people involved in Brisbane’s Hotel Grand Chancellor cluster confirmed they shared the same strain of the virus, which is between 30 and 70 per cent more infectious.

They are a man and his partner, both in their 30s, who arrived from the UK on December 30, a hotel cleaner in her 20s and her partner, and, most recently, a man in his 40s and his daughter, in her 20s, who arrived from Lebanon on January 1.

There is a common link between all six cases: the seventh floor of the Spring Hill hotel.

They were not in adjoining rooms on the floor, which has 12 rooms and has been the temporary home of dozens of returned travellers since September.

Despite proof that, so far, the breach has affected only those on floor seven, all 129 returned travellers from across the globe quarantining in the Grand Chancellor were on Wednesday being moved by ambulance into different hotels around the city as authorities scrambled to identify how the virus was passed from guest to cleaner and fellow guest.

Multi-agency taskforce Sierra Linnet, led by Queensland police, is conducting the investigation into how the virus breached quarantine protocols and is understood to be requesting fresh interviews with those infected.

Queensland Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young described it as an “epidemiological mystery” and said staff at the hotel and the infected guests had been co-operative with the investigation.

“This has happened very quickly and we’re struggling to find out how it’s got out of that room,” Dr Young said.

“We know they are linked but we don’t know how they are linked in terms of spread from one person to the next.”

The move to evacuate the entire Grand Chancellor was precautionary, Dr Young said, and she was not concerned guests would spread the virus to other hotels. “Remember, this hotel has been taking travellers since the end of September and done a ­really good job,” she said. “There’s just been this incident we need to unravel.”

Cleaners working at hotels housing returned overseas travellers are required to wear masks, gloves and gowns and are given specialised training. Rooms that have housed an infected guest, who is usually taken to hospital, undergo a “deep cleaning”, with extra precautions in place.

Director of Epidemiology at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity Jodie McVernon said the most common transmission of the virus was through close contact. “Any infectious disease will have its usual modes of transmission and then there’s weird things that can happen,” Professor McVernon said.

“We have seen transmission from lift buttons and bin lids that people can touch and so this is where there’s a forensic investi­gation trying to make sense of how this has occurred. If you can isolate the location of contact, then you can confirm that other people won’t have come into contact with that and reduce your concern.”