Bin-bag exit as coronavirus quarantine Holiday Inn hotel cleared

Dozens of quarantined travellers, all positive or suspected of having COVID-19, have been evacuated from a hotel in Melbourne’s CBD after water damaged the facility.

Returned travellers are led from the Holiday Inn in Melbourne CBD after water damage forced its closure on Tuesday. Picture: David Crosling

Dozens of quarantined travellers, all positive or suspected of having COVID-19, have been evacuated from a hotel in Melbourne’s CBD after water from a sprinkler system damaged the facility.

Donning a garbage bag, the first guest to exit the Holiday Inn on Flinders Lane was escorted onto a SkyBus by COVID-19 Quarantine Victoria workers in full personal protective equipment at 9.45am on Tuesday.

Victorian Premier Daniel ­Andrews said the guest was ­wearing a mask and gloves under the bag, which they wore to hide their identity from the media.

“What they are doing is they do not want to be identified, nor should they feel compelled to be identified,” he said.

“It serves no public value at all to be taking photos of people.”

Victoria’s hotel quarantine system is again under intense scrutiny after an infection control breach at the Holiday Inn at Melbourne Airport triggered the state’s third lockdown, which is due to end at 11.59pm on Wednesday.

CQV commissioner Emma Cassar said a cleaner had accidentally set off the sprinkler at the Flinders Lane hotel, which ­houses positive and suspected-positive guests, with the water damaging four of eight floors.

“The advice that I’ve got is it was a sprinkler (and) it was knocked during cleaning,” she said.

“Whether that resulted in a pipe bursting or a pipe leaking, the one challenge that we’ve had is it’s really difficult to do any rectification works in a health hotel, and we wouldn’t take those risks for any member of the community.”

A mother holding a baby was escorted inside the Pullman Hotel at Albert Park at about 12.45pm after CQV workers ­trolleyed their luggage inside. Both mother and baby wore surgical masks.

Authorities transported separately the occupants of each room from the Holiday Inn to the Pullman, which has been repurposed to quarantine guests after hosting Australian Open players and their entourages.

Of 31 residents of the hotel, Ms Cassar said 13 were positive cases, and 18 were suspected cases who were yet to test positive.

She said the Holiday Inn’s foyer needed to be disinfected after each guest left.

“These are going to be really slow operations,” she said.

“Keep in mind every time we move one person, terminal cleaning, and then another person, so it will take a lot of time and we would ask for the media, please be respectful of their privacy.”

Ms Cassar said CQV staff had attempted to use SkyBuses to block the media from filming the evacuation.

She said that on Sunday afternoon she called and apologised to a man whose use of a nebuliser has been blamed by Victorian authorities for the virus escaping from the Holiday Inn at Melbourne Airport.

“These are private conversations between me and the family,” she said.

“It was a productive conversation and if there are any actions or uplifts we’ll consider that as part of the incident review.”

Ms Cassar had previously said an audit of hotel quarantine ­admission forms found no record of the man declaring the nebuliser, which he used to take ­asthma medication.

The man, who was treated in intensive care for COVID-19, has told multiple media outlets he told nurses he used the device when he arrived at hotel quarantine.

The nebuliser is believed to have aerolised particles of COVID-19 that leaked from the man’s room, with the number of cases linked to the cluster rising to 19 on Monday.

The renewed public interest in hotel quarantine comes after poor infection control among ­security guards working at the first program seeded a second wave in 2020, claiming the lives of 801 people and locking Melbourne down for 111 days.

A number of changes, including the establishment of CQV and daily testing of workers, have been implemented following an inquiry.