Coronavirus: Rush to isolate as Melbourne hotel case remains a mystery

Thousands of contacts linked to an Australian Open quarantine hotel worker have been forced to isolate across Victoria, as health authorities scramble to establish how the resident support officer contracted the coronavirus.

Melbourne’s Grand Hyatt hotel. Picture: Getty Images

Thousands of contacts linked to an Australian Open quarantine hotel worker have been forced to isolate across Victoria, as health authorities scramble to establish how the resident support officer contracted the coronavirus more than a week after the last known positive cases left Melbourne’s Grand Hyatt quarantine hotel.

Approximately 300,000 residents of suburbs visited over the weekend by the 26-year-old man from Noble Park in Melbourne’s southeast were sent text messages ordering them to monitor for symptoms and test and isolate if necessary, while four fire stations and three fire district headquarter offices were closed as a result of links to the man, who is a Country Fire Authority volunteer.

The man initially returned a negative coronavirus test when he completed his final shift last Friday, seven days after COVID-positive Spanish tennis player Paula Badosa and her coach left the hotel on January 22.

 

After a busy weekend during which he visited at least 14 public venues — as well as attending a social event with other CFA volunteers from brigades from as far afield as Shepparton and Seymour, north of Melbourne — the man developed symptoms. He was tested on Tuesday and received his positive result on Wednesday, effectively giving the virus a five-day head start before contact tracing could begin.

While 17 household and social close contacts of the man had been identified on Thursday, a further 500 tennis players, officials and support people, as well as about 100 hotel quarantine staff members from the Grand Hyatt, were forced to isolate and get tested as “casual contacts”.

Premier Daniel Andrews predicted hundreds if not thousands more would be required to isolate as a consequence of the “three rings” principle of quarantining secondary close contacts.

“That’s the most important part in terms of, yes, inconveniencing and locking down many hundreds, perhaps thousands of people, but not having to put in place rules that affect millions more,” Mr Andrews said.

Of the 17 close contacts, nine had returned negative test results late on Thursday, with results pending for the others.

The 14 venues visited by the man between Friday and Monday included a bottle shop and kebab shop in the CBD and West Melbourne, a cafe in bayside Brighton, and a club, driving range, mechanic, Bunnings, and supermarkets.

Genomic sequencing was expected to be completed by Friday, confirming whether or not the worker had caught the virus ­directly from Ms Badosa or her coach, and whether the man has the more contagious UK strain.

“It’s not rocket science that he caught it at the hotel,” Deputy Chief Health Officer Allen Cheng said. “We are aware he was on the floor where there were cases.

“The timing doesn’t line up, so we are still investigating all the possibilities,” Professor Cheng said of the 11-day gap ­between the last known case in the hotel and the man’s positive test.

Professor Cheng said all 500 tennis personnel from the Grand Hyatt were being treated as casual contacts rather than close contacts because they had been quarantined in their hotel rooms during the exposure period, leading authorities to consider the chance that they contracted the coronavirus was “relatively low”.