Fears Covid horse has bolted after Byron Bay hen’s party

Concerns rise in NSW over a super-spreading hen’s party in Byron Bay with another five partygoers testing positive.

4 min read

10:21PMMarch 30, 2021.

Updated 8:35AMMarch 31, 2021

A near-deserted Main Beach at Byron Bay on Tuesday.

A super-spreading hen’s party in the northern NSW beach town of Byron Bay has heightened fears that Brisbane’s escalating COVID-19 outbreak jumped the state border after another five partygoers tested positive.

The cluster — centred on an unvaccinated nurse from Queensland’s second-largest hospital who infected her sister, friends and a male entertainer at the celebration last weekend — has increased to eight cases.

Overnight, NSW Health ordered people from 13 venues in Byron Bay, Ewingsdale and Suffolk Park into isolation until it can assess the transmission risk. NSW Health also expanded its list in the last 24 hours.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian warned more infections were set to emerge, as federal Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly declared Brisbane a national virus hotspot.

An empty Byron Beach Hotel in Byron Bay on Tuesday. Picture: Scott Powick

The nurse had cared for COVID patients at Brisbane’s Princess Alexandra Hospital, where a doctor also tested positive on March 12. They separately and unwittingly seeded twin knots of community transmission of the more contagious UK strain of the virus that forced the Queensland capital into a snap 72-hour lockdown on Monday.

The 1050-bed hospital was accepting only critical cases late on Tuesday, having been taken off line over linkages between the latest outbreak and its main COVID ward as a “precautionary measure”, Queensland Health said.

All staff who had worked in Ward 5D between March 19 and last Sunday, March 28, would be tested.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk could be forced to extend the stay-at-home orders over Easter after she admitted further community spread was probable. “We just have to take this day by day,” she said. “So far, the fact that we have these cases that are linked is good news. Do we expect to see more cases? Probably.

“The big question will be whether or not we see unlinked community transmission. It is a day-by-day proposition. That is why this three-day lockdown is absolutely necessary.”

The outbreak doubled in size to 15 cases, with eight new infections emerging on Tuesday — two of them historically linked to the doctor, who was also unvaccinated, taking that cluster to seven locally acquired cases plus two older ones involving returned travellers in hotel quarantine.

Of the five additional cases definitively tied to the nurse, four had partied with the young woman and her sister in Byron Bay, while the male entertainer, a moonlighting tradesman from the Gold Coast, worked on Monday at the Tri-Care aged care home at Mermaid Beach before his test results came through, sending the facility into lockdown.

A sixth case, a close contact, is also believed to be linked to this cluster.

Prior to Professor Kelly’s designation of Brisbane as a COVID hotspot, all states and territories had slapped restrictions on travel to and from the Queensland capital. NSW is the only jurisdiction to not close its border to people from Brisbane or stipulate that they spend a fortnight in quarantine.

Mystery surrounds how the nurse contracted the virus when genomic sequencing showed her infection was a near perfect match to that of a quarantined returned traveller from India who was brought into the PA Hospital on Monday March 22, but with whom she had no direct contact.

While the nurse had been on duty in the COVID ward four days earlier, Queensland Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young said the woman could not have been infected then. This leaves open the possibility the nurse could have caught the virus from another as-yet unidentified staff member while on night duty at the hospital on March 23-24.

“My hypothesis, and this all has to be tested … is that she acquired the infection when at work that night,” Dr Young said. “We don’t know if she got it directly from that patient because she wasn’t working with COVID cases that night … we’ve got to confirm that, or whether she got it from someone else in the hospital.”

Health workers at a pop-up testing site in Byron Bay. Picture: Scott Powick

Ms Berejiklian warned she “wouldn’t be surprised” if more cases from the Byron Bay hen’s party emerged in NSW, and urged people planning to holiday in Queensland over Easter and the school holidays to change their plans. “If it was me, I would postpone them,” the Premier said.

The timing couldn’t be worse for Byron Bay as tens of thousands descend on the fashionable holiday spot for the annual Bluesfest music festival this week — even though ticketholders from Greater Brisbane will be barred from opening day on Thursday.

Byron Shire mayor Simon Richardson said locals were waiting anxiously for information “as to what’s unfolding” and backed Bluesfest to proceed if health authorities considered it to be safe.

NSW Health issued alerts for venues visited by the hen’s party attendees, including the women’s toilets at the Suffolk Beachfront Holiday Park between 8.30am and 4pm last Friday, March 26.

Byron Bay alerts

Meanwhile, NSW Health has ordered people from 13 venues in Byron Bay, Ewingsdale and Suffolk Park into isolation until it can assess the transmission risk. NSW Health has expanded its list in the last 24 hours.

Sunday, March 28

The Farm Byron Bay, 11 Ewingsdale Road, 8.45am-10.30am

Three Blue Ducks Restaurant, 11 Ewingsdale Road, 8.45am-9.30am

Suffolk Beachfront Holiday Park, 143 Alcorn St, 4pm-8.30pm

Saturday, March 27

Mokha Cafe, 2/2 Lawson St, 11am - 12pm (Patrons seated in laneway of Feros Arcade)

Mokha Cafe, 2/2 Lawson St, 11am - 12pm (Patrons seated inside or outside the venue - not in the laneway of Feros Arcade).

Betty’s Burgers & Concrete Co, 2 Lawson St, 11am - 12pm (Patrons seated in laneway of Feros Arcade)

Black Sheep, 46 Jonson St, 12.30pm-12.40pm

Ghanda Clothing, 3/8 Lawson St, 12pm-12.15pm

Quiksilver Byron Bay, 2 Jonson St, 12.40pm-12.45pm

Tiger Lily Byron Bay, 3/17-21 Jonson St, 12.25pm-12.30pm