Coronavirus: School case linked to pizza bar

Health authorities have confirmed that a female student whose entire school has been plunged into ­isolation had eaten at the Woodville Pizza Bar.

South Australian Chief Public Health Officer Nicola Spurrier. Picture: Roy VanDerVegt.

The notorious pizza bar at the centre of Adelaide’s Parafield COVID-19 cluster has been embroiled in controversy again after health authorities confirmed that a female student whose entire school has been plunged into ­isolation had eaten a pizza there.

The Woodville Pizza Bar, which is no longer trading, is already under police investigation after it emerged that three of its employees had lied about the business’s staffing arrangements.

But SA Health are still not convinced that the restaurant was necessarily the source of her infection, and have launched an urgent investigation.

Adelaide was plunged into lockdown last week following a lie by one of the pizza bar workers, a Spanish national, who was also working as a kitchen hand at a quarantine hotel. He misled police and health authorities by claiming he merely ordered a pizza from the business, rather than admitting that he was working there along with another man who had COVID-19 and was working shifts both at the pizza bar and in hotel quarantine as a security guard.

But on Thursday, it emerged that the Woodville High student whose school has been closed with every student and their ­families forced to self-­isolate had herself fallen ill after buying a pizza there on November 14.

South Australia’s Chief Public Health Officer, Nicola Spurrier, defended the female student and said she had done the right thing by getting tested once she became sick.

“This person has done the right thing. I am strongly of the belief nothing was done that was wrong,” Professor Spurrier said.

“It looks as though she has had an exposure at the Woodville Pizza Bar having picked up a pizza on November 14 when that was an infectious period.

“It’s very important anybody in that area, particularly if you frequent that pizza bar, look at our website, look at our dates when we know there were people with infections, and think, ‘do I need to get tested?’.”

Professor Spurrier said that despite the case, the Parafield cluster was under control with no evidence off community transmission, and that the details as to how the student caught the bug were still being determined.

“This exposure was way back at the beginning,” Professor Spurrier said. “We still haven’t completely nailed exactly how she got infected, and when she was infectious.

“There is also the possibility there might have been someone else, another person who had been infected that this person has become infected through.”

Professor Spurrier’s deputy, Mike Cusack, also said that while all Woodville High students’ families had for now been told to self-isolate, many or most would be free to leave isolation soon once the student’s exact movements at school this week had been determined.

He said SA Health would use a process of elimination to find who was not in areas of the school where they may have been in close contact with the new case.

“A lot going into self-isolation will be able to come out,” he said.