Coronavirus: Concern high as Melbourne’s Holiday Inn cluster grows to 11

Victoria’s Holiday Inn quarantine hotel coronavirus cluster has grown by three cases to 11.

Victorian coronavirus testing commander Jeroen Weimar says the latest cases had been isolating since ‘Monday or Tuesday’. Picture: Sarah Matray

Victoria’s Holiday Inn quarantine hotel coronavirus cluster has grown by three cases to 11, following confirmation on Thursday that an assistant manager at the hotel and two spouses of previously diagnosed staff had contracted the virus.

The state has now had 10 transmissions of the highly contagious UK strain of the virus linked to three quarantine hotels in less than a fortnight, including in a resident at the Park Royal hotel who caught the virus from a family across the corridor, and in a floor monitor at the Grand Hyatt Australian Open quarantine hotel.

The Holiday Inn cluster now consists of a family of three who are believed to have contracted the virus overseas, an authorised officer at the hotel, two food and beverage attendants and their spouses, the assistant manager, and two recently departed hotel quarantine guests.

The staff and guests are believed to have contracted the virus after a member of the family of three — who is now battling the virus in intensive care — used a nebuliser to vaporise medication on February 3 and 4, before the family was moved to at “health hotel” as a result of testing positive on February 4.

Victorian coronavirus testing commander Jeroen Weimar said the latest cases had been isolating since “Monday or Tuesday”, after news broke very late on Sunday night of the first staff case at the Holiday Inn, with contact tracing interviews under way late on Thursday and any venues the three may have visited at the weekend set to be added to the Health Department’s list of exposure sites.

Mr Weimar said while authorities took some confidence from the fact that those who had so far tested positive were primary close contacts of other cases, the battle to contain the cluster was “by no means over”, with contacts numbering in the hundreds.

“We are still in the opening quarter of the Holiday Inn outbreak,” he said.

“We’ve got a lot more work to do, and although we’re standing here saying these are still within the primary close contacts fields, we have a significant number of primary close contacts and we’ve got a lot of work to do to really make sure we pull this one up.”

Mr Weimar said the key unknown factor was the UK strain of the virus, with the infection of the two hotel staff spouses representing the first known occasion the mutation had been transmitted outside hotel quarantine in ­Victoria.

“We don’t yet know how easily it transmits when you get into the second, third generation of people catching it,” he said.

“That’s going to be the challenge for us now and over coming days … as we see it starting to move and transmit in households, we (need to be) confident we’ve got those people locked down, we’re confident people are doing the right thing.”

Mr Weimar said the part of Melbourne of most concern for community transmission was Sunbury, where a food and beverage attendant whose spouse has tested positive visited venues on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, despite having experienced symptoms on Saturday.

Victorian health authorities including Mr Weimar held an online community meeting with Sunbury locals on Wednesday night to encourage them to monitor for symptoms and get tested.

“This is relevant to all of us and that’s why it’s very important we don’t just see this is a hotel quarantine challenge,” Mr Weimar said.

“This is also an issue for local communities and that’s why we want to reach out to them.”