Coronavirus: it’s not an ideal world, says Victoria health chief Brett Sutton

Victoria health chief Brett Sutton has defended staff moving between the overhauled hotel quarantine program and settings such as aged care and public housing.

Victoria's Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton at the daily coronavirus update at the Treasury Theatre in Melbourne. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Andrew Henshaw

Victoria’s Chief Health Officer has defended staff moving between the Andrews government’s overhauled hotel quarantine program and settings such as aged care and public housing while Victorians were being locked in their homes and entire industries shut down to limit the spread of coronavirus.

Professor Brett Sutton confirmed on Friday that of nine staff members who tested positive for the virus while working in the Brady and Grand Chancellor quarantine hotels between July 27 and the end of August, six worked for catering and cleaning company Spotless, a seventh worked for Victoria Police, an eighth in “support” and “cleaning” services, and the ninth for the Department of Health and Human Services.

Of the Spotless staff, one group of three and a group of two lived together, and likely spread the virus within their households.

Professor Sutton said one of the nine cases had been “epidemiologically linked” to an aged-care facility. DHHS confirmed earlier this week that another was linked to public housing.

The Chief Health Officer was asked why hotel quarantine ­workers were moving between hotel quarantine — the setting that in late May and early June sparked a second wave of infections which has been linked to 783 deaths — and vulnerable environments such as public housing and aged care, linked to 636 of those deaths.

Police stand by a gate surroudning the Alfred St public housing tower in North Melbourne in July. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Crosling

Professor Sutton said: “I think that all settings are vulnerable in the sense that we would ideally like to have every single individual work in a single workplace.

“Cleaners need to work across multiple workplaces. That is the nature of that industry.

“The reality is that people who are contracted to work across multiple­ sites, for the full work that they are entitled to, are a risk.

“We would love people to be totally­ tied to a single site.

“But if that site is only offering three or four hours of work per week, that’s not a sustainable income­ for anyone, and so there are individuals across different industries … cleaning is one of them, who work across different sites.

“These are essential industries. There’s no question that cleaners were required through the COVID response as much as anyone else. They were essential staff.

“So we were totally focused on the fact that there was a need for that workforce, but we were also obviously giving policy direction to minimise work across settings, but it cannot be shut down completely.

“We know that is a challenge in different areas. It’s been addressed very, very substantially and we’re in a much better place now, but it was never one where you could just step in and say, ‘You cannot work in more than one setting’.”

On July 23, before any of the nine workers contracted the virus, the Andrews government introduced $1500 payments for positive cases and close contacts and $300 payments for people needing to be tested to encourage vulnerable workers to stay home.

From August 2, the whole of Melbourne went into stage-four lockdown, with entire industries shut down to prevent the spread of coronavirus.