Coronavirus: South Australia Police facing heat over medi-hotel security

Police Commissioner Grant Stevens has fired back at reporters during a press conference over criticisms of SA’s hotel quarantine program.

outh Australian Police commissioner Grant Stevens. Picture: Tricia Watkinson

All international flights into Adelaide will be cancelled until November 30 and the six-day lockdown will continue despite zero new cases being recorded today after a fiery press conference where the SA Police Commissioner angrily defended the management of hotel quarantine.

With SA now into its first day of a hard lockdown to crush the Parafield cluster, the 10.30 press conference led by Premier Steven Marshall became heated when Commissioner Grant Stevens hit out at criticisms of the hotel quarantine program.

The good news from the press conference came from chief medical officer Professor Nicola Spurrier who revealed that while no new cases had been recorded, the snap lockdown needed to proceed due to the vast breadth of hotspots visited by infected persons over the past fortnight.

There are 23 confirmed cases and 17 suspected cases linked to the Parafield cluster but combined these people visited locations across roughly one-third of Adelaide’s suburbs, with 2000 contacts or relatives of contacts already identified, but thousands more unidentified.

South Australia Premier Steven Marshall giving his state first daily coronavirus update. Picture: Tricia Watkinson

Professor Spurrier explained that the six-day lockdown was designed not just as a catch-up to identify and test remaining people, but also to take the entire population out of circulation for six days to stop any further spread.

“The best bit of good news is we have no new cases to report,” Professor Spurrier said.

“But we are putting a double ring-fence around all of those people. This is why we have done the pause - to stop the virus in its tracks and find as many of those people as possible.”

Professor Spurrier named seven locations around the CBD including the key hotspot in the cluster, the Woodville Pizza Bar, where it has emerged that a security guard at a CBD medi-hotel who tested positive to the virus was also working a second job at the western suburbs pizzeria.

Every customer who bought pizzas from that store between November 6 and 16 is still being urged to be tested for Covid.

Amid public concern about the medi-hotel worker holding that second job, Commissioner Stevens said it was unfair for people to suggest that medi-hotel staff should live their entire lives outside of work in virtual lockdown.

“You’re being completely unreasonable,” Commissioner Stevens told reporters.

“Let’s be balanced in our perceptions about what these people are doing. These people have lives. Does it make any difference if a person who works in a medi-hotel has a second job?

“Your expectation at the moment is that these people go to work and then isolate until they return to work. There is a level of risk that must be expected by them and by us. They have lives to lead, they have mortgages to pay.”

State Chief Officer Nicola Spurrier. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Roy VanDerVegt.

Commissioner Stevens was pressed as to the findings of the Victorian hotel quarantine inquiry which recommended that medi-hotel workers should not have second jobs.

He said that it would not be feasible to have such a restriction in SA as it would require that everyone working in quarantine, including police and ADF soldiers, would be prevented from having any contact with anyone outside of their quarantine work.

“I would suggest to you that it comes down to best endeavours,” he said.

“They have lives beyond their responsibilities in a medi-hotel. It simply would notion be possible to bring in the required number of people.”

Premier Steven Marshall said SA’s hotel quarantine system had been reviewed favourably just last month but that SA Health had already announced this week that all medi-hotel staff would now undergo regular Covid tests.

He also said he had spoken to the Commonwealth Wednesday night to have international flights cancelled. Domestic flights are still operating from NSW, Victoria and the ACT, with the other states and territories having closed their borders to SA.

Mr Marshall said he was confident SA would contain the cluster, saying 7000 people had been tested on Wednesday in a new state record.

“We need this circuit breaker to protect the elderly, the vulnerable and wider community from this disease,” he said.

“The alternative is the virus escapes into the wider community. We will not get a second chance.”