Victorian hotel quarantine rules under scrutiny

The Victorian Chief Health Officer says elements of the state’s hotel quarantine program will be reviewed in light of two possibly airborne transmissions of coronavirus cases emerging this week.

Victorian Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Geraghty

Victorian Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton says elements of the state’s hotel quarantine program including PPE, testing and ventilation will be reviewed in light of two possibly airborne transmissions of coronavirus that have emerged this week.

The Andrews government confirmed on Wednesday it was ­investigating after genomic testing showed a woman in hotel quarantine had caught the highly contagious UK variant of the virus from a family across the corridor, despite no known direct contact.

Hours later, Premier Daniel Andrews called a late-night press conference to announce that a worker at the Australian Open tennis quarantine hotel the Grand Hyatt had tested positive for the virus, five days after testing negative on the day of his last shift, and 11 days after the last known coronavirus cases had left the hotel having had no known contact with the worker.

Professor Sutton said on Friday that genomic testing had confirmed the 26-year-old man had the British strain and had likely contracted it from one of four residents of the hotel known to have had the same variant.

“Where exactly it’s come from is still to be determined. We do need to marry up that genomics information with the epidemiological information, so the CCTV footage, the interviews, to really understand how transmission might have ­occurred,” Professor Sutton said.

Amid revelations that the worker was required to wear only a surgical mask in his role as a residential support officer, Professor Sutton said authorities were “going to look into PPE standards”.

He said the health department would also explore whether quarantine workers should continue to be tested daily in the week or fortnight after their final shift.

Professor Sutton said the likelihood that more contagious new variants of the virus transmitted more readily through airborne fragments also highlighted the need to review airconditioning and ventilation systems in quarantine hotels.

“(Airborne transmission has) always been a possibility, but it’s going to be a bigger risk factor going forward so we need to bear that in mind as we tighten every ­element,” he said.

“Not every single room will have hospital-grade ventilation standards, but we are doing everything we possibly can to review that and to make sure that we’re addressing the risk of airborne spread.”

 

Before Friday’s national cabinet meeting, Mr Andrews said he would “boldly predict” that Victoria and other states would strengthen their hotel quarantine models further in light of recent infections.

“All states and territories, as I understand it, have at least committed to copy our model … so there’ll be other things that have to change across the country, and that’s good for everybody, because a problem in Sydney is a problem in Melbourne and all the way around,’’ he said.

On Friday afternoon, 16 of 17 close contacts of the hotel quarantine worker had tested negative for the virus and were continuing to isolate, with 14,612 tests returned in the 24 hours to Thursday night, another 8000 processed to 9am, and 6000 more swabs taken on Thursday awaiting processing.

“We’ve spared no effort to run this to ground, and whilst there’s still days that will be relevant to us, and it’s not over yet, these are in some respects the very best outcomes that we would hope for,” Mr Andrews said.

Victorian coronavirus testing commander Jeroen Weimar said 743 people had been identified as workplace contacts of the worker, with another 506 members of the Australian Open contingent who stayed at the hotel considered casual contacts.