Third Victorian hotel quarantine COVID-19 case threatens increase in arrivals

Victorian Emergency Services Minister Lisa Neville says the state will only proceed with plans to increase its cap on international arrivals next Monday if it is safe to do so.

A quarantining guest at the Melbourne Airport Holiday Inn, site of the latest outbreak. Picture: Andrew Henshaw

Victorian Emergency Services Minister Lisa Neville says the state will only proceed with plans to increase its cap on international arrivals next Monday if it is safe to do so, after Victoria late on Sunday revealed the third discovery in five days of coronavirus transmission in hotel quarantine.

The latest case in a woman in her early 50s who was working as an authorised officer at the Holiday Inn at Melbourne Airport ­follows the revelation late last Wednesday that a 26-year-old man had contracted the virus while acting as a residential support officer for the Australian Open tennis entourage at the Grand Hyatt, and the news earlier last Wednesday that a female resident of the Park Royal hotel had contracted the virus from a family staying across the corridor.

At Friday’s national cabinet meeting, Victoria agreed to increase the weekly number of international arrivals it will quarantine from 1120 to 1310. This compares with NSW and Queensland agreeing to double their caps to 3010 and 1000 arrivals respectively, South Australia increasing it from 490 to 530, and WA maintaining its at 512.

But in light of Victoria’s new cases, Ms Neville indicated Monday’s planned increase was under review. “At this stage we are working on the basis that we will increase the cap from next Monday, but I can assure people we will not do that unless it is absolutely safe to do it and we’ve got the staff and the conditions to do it,” she said.

“We haven’t made a decision to not scale up yet, and we haven’t got a decision to scale down.

“At this stage, we’ve all signed up to bringing Australians back where we can. We’re doing it in a balanced way. We’re not as high as NSW and we won’t get to NSW because of our model.

“Safety will drive us, infection prevention will drive us, the system will drive us, but at this stage we are trying to safely get as many Australians back home as we possibly can.”

Ms Neville listed a raft of measures Victoria had introduced or was considering in the wake of the latest cases, including staggering meal delivery times in hotel quarantine, introducing face shields in addition to masks for all hotel quarantine staff, placing guests in rooms where they are separated from other guests by a buffer in the form of other rooms, and testing quarantine workers on their days off.

Health staff at the Melbourne Airport Holiday Inn, site of the latest outbreak. Picture: Andrew Henshaw

Victorian authorities are also conducting a review of airconditioning and ventilation systems in hotel quarantine, and considering whether to test asymptomatic overseas return travellers on arrival, rather than waiting until Day Three of quarantine to test those without symptoms.

Ms Neville said she was confident the program still had sufficient staff, despite 950 of more than 3000 available staff currently isolating due to contact with the three recent cases.

The only coronavirus cases known to have been in the Holiday Inn quarantine hotel during the period Victoria’s latest coronavirus-positive worker contracted the virus are a family of three who were moved to a “health hotel” after testing positive for the virus, Ms Neville said.

“At this stage it’s not clear that (the worker) had a dealing with these three, but again … we want to keep doing interviews,” Ms Neville said.

Victorian Testing Commander Jeroen Weimar said genomic analysis which should be completed late on Tuesday or early Wednesday may provide greater insight into the source of the woman’s infection.

“Our lead assumption at the moment is that there’s been some connection back to hotel quarantine because that’s the largest risk that this individual faced,” Mr Weimar said.