Infection puts spotlight back on hotel quarantine

Coronavirus has escaped hotel quarantine again, this time infecting a man in his 30s who quarantined in South Australia before returning to Victoria last week.

A Melbourne man has tested positive to COVID-19 after returning home from hotel quarantine at the Playford Hotel in Adelaide. Picture: Simon Cross

Coronavirus has escaped hotel quarantine again, this time infecting a man in his 30s who quarantined in South Australia before returning to Victoria last week.

The case represents the 19th time the virus has leaked from quarantine hotels since transmissions out of two Victorian quarantine hotels almost a year ago sparked the state’s deadly second wave and 111-day lockdown.

There have now been nine known breaches out of NSW’s quarantine program, six out of Victoria’s, three in Queensland and two each in South Australia and Western Australia

The man at the centre of the most recent leak travelled to Adelaide from India via the Maldives and Singapore, arriving on April 19, prior to the imposition of the Morrison government’s ban on all travel to Australia by people who have been in India over the past 14 days.

South Australian chief health officer Nicola Spurrier confirmed on Tuesday the man had been housed in a hotel room adjacent to another returned traveller who was moved to a hospital hotel on May 4 after testing positive for coronavirus on what was day nine of that person’s quarantine period.

This was the same day the Victorian man left hotel quarantine to travel back to Wollert, on Melbourne’s northern outskirts, after returning negative test results on days one, five, nine and 13 of his 14-day stay in Adelaide.

Professor Spurrier said she did not believe the man had been infectious when he flew from Adelaide to Melbourne on Tuesday May 4.

Victorian Health Minister Martin Foley said the man noticed symptoms on Saturday, May 8, and got tested on Monday May 10, with the state’s Health Department notified of the positive result early on Tuesday.

Mr Foley said he did not “have enough toes and fingers to count the number of times that we’ve seen the virus leak out of hotel quarantine right across the country”, with genomic testing of the man by Victorian authorities expected show a match with testing already conducted on his Adelaide quarantine hotel neighbour.

Brett Sutton. Picture: Getty Images

All three of the man’s household contacts returned negative test results later on Tuesday, as authorities scrambled to trace other contacts he may have encountered while out and about last week.

Four locations including supply chain business TIC Group in Altona North in Melbourne’s southwest, the Curry Vault Indian restaurant in Melbourne’s CBD, the Indiagate spice and grocery shop and nearby Woolworths in Epping in Melbourne’s north have been classified as “Tier One” venues.

Anyone who visited TIC Group at any point last Thursday, the restaurant between 6.30pm and 9.30pm last Friday, the spice shop between 5 and 6pm on Saturday or the Woolworths between 5:40pm and 6:38 the same day has been instructed to isolate, get tested, quarantine for 14 days and contact the Victorian Health Department.

An Epping 7-11 and the rear section of the TIC Group business have been classified as “Tier 2” locations with people who have been nearby ordered to get tested and isolate until they receive a negative result.

Victorian chief health officer Brett Sutton confirmed the Health Department would continue to interview the man, but said: “The onset of symptoms were on the 8th, so he was infectious for 48 hours prior to that.”

The state’s COVID-19 response commander, Jeroen Weimar, said authorities would consider bolstering restrictions should any evidence emerge of community transmission in Victoria.

“I think at this stage this is all around what we find out in the next 24 to 48 hours” Mr Weimar told ABC radio. “It always depends on the context.”

Mr Weimar said there were understood to have been 30 to 40 people in the Curry Vault restaurant on the Friday night, but not all had checked in via the QR code.

SA Health Minister Stephen Wade, meanwhile, defended his state’s hotel quarantine system as “nation-leading”.

“In particular we have the COVID-19 positive facility at Tom’s Court and this case highlights the benefits of that because the positive case was taken out of the Playford, reducing the risk,” he said.

“The SA Health team were nation-leading in terms of focusing in on the need to improve ventilation and my understanding is Tom’s Court had hospital-level ventilation installed and ventilation was looked at, at all of our medi-hotels and improved where necessary.”

Other states including NSW announced late on Tuesday that people arriving from greater Melbourne would be obliged to complete a declaration confirming they have not attended any of the venues of concern related to the latest case.