Coronavirus: Daniel Andrews in gold-standard lockdown for Victoria

After plunging millions back into stage-four lockdown amid fears UK strain has spread around Australia, Premier will push for quarantine review.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, flanked by Health Minister Martin Foley, left, and Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton, right. Picture: David Crosling

Almost seven million Victorians have been plunged back into stage-four lockdown for at least five days, amid fears the UK strain of coronavirus could have spread around Australia via thousands of travellers potentially exposed to infectious cases at Melbourne ­Airport.

Business groups criticised the shutdown, which will hit hospitality businesses over the Valentine’s Day weekend, as other states closed their borders with Victoria.

Premier Daniel Andrews announced the suspension of international arrivals in his state and signalled he would push for a national cabinet review of Australia’s hotel quarantine program.

More than 3500 passengers passed through Melbourne Airport’s terminal four between 4.45am and 1.15pm last Tuesday, as a woman linked to the Holiday Inn cluster who would test positive for coronavirus the following day worked a shift at the terminal’s busy Brunetti cafe.

Flights that left the terminal during that time headed to destinations as far afield as Cairns, Sydney, the Sunshine Coast, Mount Gambier, Burnie, Newcastle, Merimbula, Brisbane, Ballina, the Gold Coast and Launceston.

NSW on Friday raced to contact 7000 returned travellers who either visited the terminal during the exposure period or passed through any Melbourne Airport terminal on February 7 or 8.

Those who visited terminal four have been ordered to isolate for a fortnight, while those who passed through other terminals in the preceding days are required to isolate until they test negative.

The precautions for February 7 and 8 relate to a cleaner who tested positive to COVID-19 and was also linked to the Holiday Inn cluster. The man worked across multiple ­airport terminals on those days.

However, Victoria’s Health Department said on Friday evening the cleaner, who also worked at a school, did not have “passenger interaction” and no close contacts were identified outside his staff group. For that reason, health authorities only declared terminal four an exposure site.

While the NSW border with Victoria remains open, anyone travelling from the southern state is required to adhere to Victoria’s five-day lockdown and stay home until at least Wednesday.

Queensland joined every other state and territory except NSW in closing its border, ordering 1500 people who had returned to that state via Melbourne’s terminal four to isolate for a fortnight.

The Holiday Inn cluster — believed to have been sparked by a recently returned overseas traveller, who used a nebuliser on February 3 and 4 to vaporise and inhale medication — reached 13 cases on Friday. More than 900 close contacts are in isolation.

The 13 cases comprise: the nebuliser user, who is battling the virus in intensive care, and two family members; two former guests of the hotel; a female ­authorised officer; an assistant manager; two food and beverage attendants and their spouses; and two other household contacts of staff members.

Mr Andrews insisted the nebuliser user, a chronic asthmatic, had failed to declare the device when he entered quarantine —  a clear breach of the rules.  But the returned traveller later said he had twice been given permission by Victorian health authorities to use it.  

“If I was told that I couldn’t use it, I never would have used it. The way it has all come out …  has made it sound like I was using it illegally. You are left feeling like a criminal,” he told Nine newspapers.  

Four months after Victorians ended a devastating 111-day lockdown last year sparked by failures in hotel quarantine, Mr Andrews announced that he was sending his state back into stage four restrictions for five days to 11.59pm on Wednesday.

Mr Andrews blamed the “wildly infectious” nature of the UK variant. “It is so hyper-infectious, and moves so fast, that it is presenting a very, very real challenge to our status, our stay-safe, stay-open, our precious thing that we‘ve built – all of us – throughout 2020,” Mr Andrews said.

“We are having cases test positive … by the time we find that case as positive, they’ve ­already infected their close contacts, their family, people they live with, people they’ve spent time with. That makes it incredibly difficult to do contact tracing, because there is no gap, if you like, between when we have the first case and their close contacts and potentially others that they have spent time with.”

Despite Mr Andrews spruiking a “third ring” approach that would see contacts of close contacts of positive cases isolated as soon as possible, household members of Holiday Inn staff were not ordered to quarantine until Tuesday, almost 48 hours after the first staff member received a positive result.

Victoria’s latest lockdown — which also applies to regional areas of the state — imposes the same measures Victorians experienced between July and October last year, with a 5km travel limit and a ban on leaving home other than for permitted work or education, two hours of exercise, medical care and caregiving, or shopping for essential items.

Weddings have been cancelled on Valentine’s Day weekend, funerals are limited to 10 people, hospitality businesses are limited to takeaway, and schools are closed to all but vulnerable children and those of essential workers.

Mr Andrews said he was confident that the “short, sharp circuit-breaker” would be effective.

“We will be able to smother this. We will be able to prevent it getting away from us. I want to be here on Wednesday next week announcing that these restrictions are coming off, but I can‘t do it on my own," he said.

The Premier said he would not accept comparisons with NSW’s successful containment of its recent clusters, without a lockdown. “That was not the UK strain. The two relevant comparisons here are Brisbane and their short, sharp shutdown, and what happened in Perth,” Mr Andrews said.

Business Council chief executive Jennifer Westacott condemned the lockdown “and more stop-start restrictions”, saying it would come as a “bitter disappointment” for the whole community. “We can’t go on managing the country like this,” she said. “This is the second lockdown caused by Victoria’s hotel quarantine system. It must not be as long and destructive as the last. We must get hotel quarantine working properly.”