Covid-19: Queensland virus ward worker not vaccinated

An unvaccinated receptionist who contracted Covid was visibly sick at work for two days before flying to Townsville on holiday.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk. Picture: Getty Images

An unvaccinated receptionist who contracted Covid-19 after being stationed outside the isolation ward of a Brisbane hospital was visibly sick at work for two days before she flew to Townsville on holiday, potentially seeding an outbreak in both cities.

The containment breach triggered the lockdown of 3.8 million people in the Queensland capital, the holiday destinations of the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast, Townsville and the Indigenous community of Palm Island as three of the 19-year-old woman’s close contacts, including her younger brother, fell ill.

The concern spiked when it was revealed late on Tuesday she had the more contagious Delta variant of the virus.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s bid to shift blame to the federal government was undercut by the revelation that the woman, a casual employee of Prince Charles Hospital on Brisbane’s northside, had not been vaccinated despite a directive three months ago for staff exposed to Covid patients to have the jab.

Prince Charles Hospital, where an unvaccinated hospital worker who contracted Covid-19 worked and potentially spread the disease to other parts of the state. Picture: NCA NewsWire / John Gass

This followed the infection of two nurses and a doctor at the 1000-bed Princess Alexandra Hospital, Covid control blunders that forced Greater Brisbane into a three-day lockdown ahead of Easter, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars to the Queensland economy.

The spectre of another set of school holidays being disrupted provoked dismay and bewilderment as an “absolutely furious” Ms Palaszczuk ordered an investigation into how the receptionist had been in such proximity to the Covid ward when unvaccinated.

Queensland Nurses and Midwives Union secretary Beth Mohle said: “I was shocked to hear that had occurred. We have to really examine the system failure here, ask questions about how this has occurred and what lessons can we learn.

“We are in a very dangerous situation right now, the whole country. We need to be taking a well-thought-out approach to manage the risk appropriately.”

Cairns-based Coalition MP Warren Entsch said Ms ­Palaszczuk could not escape ­responsibility for a second hospital failure. “It beggars belief that her own health workers are not vaccinated, whether they are working beside a Covid ward or not,” Mr Entsch said.

Liberal National Party spokeswoman Ros Bates said: “It is not rocket science. We are supposed to be vaccinating people on the frontline first and you can’t get more frontline than a hospital. If you are working right outside a Covid ward, you are still going to be exposed to all of the people walking in and out of there.”

The infected woman, from bayside Sandgate, is feared to have been contagious for up to 10 days while out and about in Brisbane and Townsville before she tested positive on Tuesday.

She developed symptoms on June 21 and was showing “clear signs” of illness when she reported for duty at the entrance of the Covid ward on June 22 and 23, The Australian has been told.

Brisbane’s Queen Street Mall. Picture: Josh Woning

Yet none of the medical personnel who would have walked past her desk is known to have queried this. Queensland chief health officer Jeannette Young said the woman interacted with at least two other “concierge workers” and a hospital janitor, all of whom were now in isolation.

Last Thursday, the woman boarded Virgin Australia flight VA369 from Brisbane to Townsville with family members. Her brother has tested positive, while another relative she lives with and a close friend are ill.

On landing in Townsville, the woman travelled to nearby Magnetic Island, staying three nights with the family party. She visited a community market in Townsville last Sunday before flying back to Brisbane on Virgin flight VA374, Dr Young said.

The CHO urged all 2000-plus residents of the island and those who attended the market or were on the affected Virgin services to come forward for testing.

The woman had a Covid swab on Monday. By then, she had a “range of symptoms”, according to a state government source.

In a circular to parents overnight, St Patrick College Shorncliffe principal Chris Mayes said Queensland Health had revealed a male student, the brother of the receptionist, had tested positive to Covid. “He is in good spirits, though unwell and is being isolated in hospital,” the email said. “He was not at school during the probable transmission period but was part of the tennis co-curricular program on Monday, which was during that time.”

Announcing the snap lockdown that came into force at 6pm on Tuesday, Ms Palaszczuk did not hide her anger at the woman’s infection at work. “Despite the health directives that she should have been vaccinated, she was not … I am absolutely furious about this,” she said. “This leaves us with no option. There will be a lockdown for three days and I don’t want it to be 30 days. I know this is going to be tough for a lot of families. I apologise for that but I don’t want to see people end up in our hospital on ventilators.”

Figures released by Queensland Health show that thousands of hospital workers likely remain unvaccinated. While 57,000 staff, including frontline doctors and nurses, had received two doses from the agency, this represented only two-thirds of the workforce. It was possible that many of those outstanding had sought out the vaccine independently.

Princess Alexandra executive director Tami Photinos said the receptionist’s role meant she was “predominantly exposed to staff rather than patients and visitors”.

Queensland is grappling with Covid outbreaks on multiple fronts, including two fly-in-fly-out miners who tested positive at Ipswich and on the Sunshine Coast, part of the cluster that forced lockdowns in Darwin and Perth. A cabin attendant linked to the Bondi cluster of Delta cases in NSW was infectious when she worked on Virgin flights to and from Queensland last Friday and Saturday. A separate outbreak centres on a Portuguese aircrew member with the Alpha or UK variant of the virus who unwittingly spread it to a number of people in the local community.