Coronavirus: Six Adelaide Airport Qantas baggage handlers infected
Adelaide Airport has been rocked by an alarming coronavirus cluster with six Qantas baggage handlers infected with COVID-19.
Adelaide Airport has been rocked by an alarming coronavirus cluster, with six Qantas baggage handlers who work in close proximity to another 100 workers testing positive to the virus, prompting warnings to travellers to and from the state capital to watch for symptoms and disinfect their luggage.
In a blow to South Australia’s low rate of infection, the baggage handlers were among 32 new cases recorded yesterday — a huge jump from 12 cases on Sunday and just six on Monday — taking the state’s total to 337.
The six baggage handlers and almost 100 fellow airport staff have all been placed in quarantine and the state’s Chief Public Health Officer Nicola Spurrier has urged people who passed through Adelaide Airport to be vigilant.
“This is a serious situation,” Dr Spurrier said of the bag handlers.
“We are talking to Qantas about risk mitigation, and there’s going to be a requirement for a significant number of staff to go into quarantine because of this.
“We’ve met with Qantas and we’re looking at implementing some workaround to ensure that baggage can be offloaded and I’m absolutely hoping that there will not be an interruption to flights.”
Dr Spurrier said that while the risk to travellers of having been infected was low, they should take extra care to monitor themselves for any symptoms in the event that they had caught the virus by handling their own baggage.
“I think this is a relatively small risk, but it’s something that is very serious because you’ve got six people already identified that use a particular area of the airport,” she said. “So if you have come off a flight today or in the last 24 hours, it may be worth giving your bags a wipe over and also monitoring yourself for symptoms. The science is not all out on other ways of transmission and we do know that the virus can survive on hard surfaces. So I do recommend for people that have flown in the last approximately 24 hours to give their bags a wipe over.”
There are now 600 people in quarantine in South Australia, almost all of whom have returned from overseas or come into contact with others who have, with just four cases of community transmission as of Tuesday morning. However, it is not clear if the 32 new cases include any new cases of community transmission.
There are eight South Australians battling coronavirus in intensive care, five of them critical.
More Coverage
Free market path to lift Indigenous
Labor has handed its new tsar for Aboriginal business extraordinary powers that could make remote-community residents the owners of defence infrastructure and the funders of energy projects.
Call for origin labels on imported timber
About a quarter of timber tested in Australia last year had incorrect species or origin labels. The industry wants new laws to prevent it happening and to support Australian producers.