Coronavirus: Single case but West Australian tracers in a spin
The hotel quarantine worker at the centre of WA’s first community-based case in 10 months may have unwittingly infected people in 16 locations at all points of the Perth compass.
The movements of the guard at the centre of Western Australia’s sudden five-day lockdown are alarming enough to make the contact tracers and pandemic experts’ heads spin.
As shops and petrol stations were inundated with panic buyers within minutes of word leaking out, the hapless security guard in his 20s could only look forward to two things — intense ongoing questioning by contact tracers and a genomic test that will tell him in a day or two whether he has the highly infectious UK strain of COVID-19.
When the lockdown began at dusk at the end of a long hot Sunday across the state’s southwest, the hotel quarantine worker at the centre of WA’s first community-based case in 10 months was already in quarantine, but not before he may have unwittingly infected people in 16 locations at all points of the Perth compass.
The man shares a house with three others in the inner-city suburb of Maylands, less than 5km east of the CBD, and had spent a busy few days in the lead-up to Australia Day.
He had ferried passengers around town in his part-time job as a ride-share driver, picking up his last passengers on January 22.
Meanwhile, he had a second job as a registered security guard at one of Perth’s designated quarantine hotels. As part of a weekly PCR testing regime, he had returned several negative tests, including his last one on January 23.
That weekly testing regime has since been updated to daily saliva testing, but Premier Mark McGowan on Sunday said the new regime had started only on Friday, January 29 — too late for the security guard.
On January 26 and 27, when the man was working two 12-hour shifts at the Sheraton Four Points Hotel in Perth’s CBD, there were four active cases of COVID-19, three cases of the UK variant and one of the South African strain.
A room on the floor the guard was patrolling was occupied by one of the UK-variant infected patrons, and it’s thought he may have contracted the virus on one of those shifts.
The man has insisted he didn’t enter any of the infected patients’ rooms or have any unnecessary exposure; how he came in contact with the virus is still unknown.
What is known is that on Thursday, January 28, he woke with symptoms of illness and called in sick. He went to a doctor and took a COVID test.
He didn’t return to work but until Saturday he was driving around the city and suburbs on routine chores and appointments. He used his electronic check-in app, as required, in most of the 16 places north, south and east of the city; they have all since become potential exposure sites.
He dropped in to visit a Coles supermarket on the 25th, and two days later a KFC fast food outlet and a car dealership, before vegetable shopping at the Spudshed supermarket in the northeast suburb of Morley.
On the 28th, he visited Edith Cowan University in the city’s northern suburbs and then headed into the CBD to make a stop at the Indian consulate-general’s office and a halal food store.
On the 29th, he went to a hairdressing salon and on to the Perth Convention Centre in the city’s heart, before attending a family medical practice that evening in Nedlands.
Before heading home that day, he headed north and east to a chemist warehouse, a petrol station and another Coles supermarket near his Maylands home.
On Saturday 30th, the man visited two more service stations and another pharmacy, all in the vicinity of his Maylands residence. It’s why potentially hundreds of people who live or work in the area of the Falkirk Avenue Maylands shopping centre are being urged to be tested for COVID-19.
At midnight on Saturday, the man’s result came back positive. On Sunday morning, Mr McGowan, Health Minister Roger Cook and Police Commissioner Chris Dawson were delivered the bad news by the state pandemic health team. Chief Health Officer Andy Robertson said the guard was “probably infectious from the 26th”.
The end of WA’s dream run of no community transmissions couldn’t have come at a worse time. Having cancelled his March state election campaign for the foreseeable future, Mr McGowan fronted a hastily convened press conference after 40 minutes’ delay and minutes after reporters were handed masks and told to put them on.
While resolute about the hard lockdown he said was needed to “crush the virus”, Mr McGowan seemed hesitant when asked about a Fremantle football game with hundreds of fans in attendance under way as he spoke.
He could only point out that the restrictions on movements within the entire southwest of the state, including Perth metropolitan region, would start from 6pm on Sunday night.
How could the hotel guard have contracted COVID-19 in a hotel quarantine site? How was he able to move around before his test result was known?
The case has led Australian Medical Association WA president Andrew Miller to describe the state’s quarantine system as “amateur and ridiculous.”
Other questions are being asked about why Western Australia, with 10 months’ COVID-free grace, has not learned from quarantine gaffes in Victoria and Queensland by banning security guards from moonlighting in other jobs, especially ones that expose them to large groups.
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