Masks to stay after two Brisbane hotel Covid-19 leaks

Queensland mask rules are unlikely to lift by the weekend after Covid-19 leaked into the community from two separate Brisbane quarantine hotels this week.

Travellers outside the Brisbane hostel where a guest tested positive. Picture: Dan Peled

Queensland mask rules are unlikely to lift by the weekend after Covid-19 leaked into the community from two separate Brisbane quarantine hotels this week.

A West Australian man who has been living at a Brisbane backpacker hostel tested positive to the virus on Wednesday and likely caught Covid during his hotel quarantine stay.

The man had arrived from The Philippines this month and was released from quarantine at Quest Hotel on July 17, after returning three negative swabs.

He spent four days in the community while contagious, from July 22, and had been staying at Roma Street City Backpackers in Brisbane’s CBD.

Health authorities were awaiting genome tests to confirm he was infected in quarantine and to determine what strain he has.

Queensland chief health officer Jeannette Young said testing rates were important more than ever. “It doesn’t matter where you are in the state because as we can see, the backpackers, when we follow up with all of them, could have gone anywhere in the state,” she said. “I think this is escalating now. We have had 13 incursions of the virus into the Queensland community over the past six weeks.

“That is more than we have seen before. I am very worried and most of those have been the Delta variant.”

The latest scare comes after a fully vaccinated man in his 40s, who had undergone 14 days’ quarantine at a different hotel, tested positive on Monday.

Metro North Health workers leave the hostel. Picture: Dan Peled

Dr Young said he was infected by a traveller in a room across the hall at the Amora Hotel.

Authorities were trawling through CCTV to figure out how the virus spread but Health Minister Yvette D’Ath said she was “confident more than likely this is something that has transferred through the air in that hotel”.

Dr Young unleashed on Australia’s “clearly insufficient” hotel quarantine model and called on national cabinet to come up with a plan to mitigate risk when it meets on Friday.

“I can understand why (people in hotel quarantine) are scared, I am as well,” Dr Young said. “This is clearly insufficient protection, our current hotel arrangements.”

Defence Minister Peter Dutton has said infection control breaches were through human error.

Mandatory mask rules were due to lift at 6am on Friday and Dr Young said a decision about an extension would be made before then: “Masks are critical, we know they make a difference and I am sure they have played a role in why we have not had widespread community transmission.”