Police to sift through four days of CCTV to probe how hotel quarantine worker got COVID

An investigation has begun into how a Brisbane cleaner working in quarantine at the Hotel Grand Chancellor developed the super-infectious UK COVID-19 variant.

Police will sift through four days of CCTV footage at the Hotel Grand Chancellor in a bid to determine how a cleaner contracted the highly contagious UK COVID-19 variant.

Her partner has also since tested positive to the pandemic virus.

The cleaner, in her 20s, is the first case of a hotel quarantine employee being infected at work in Queensland, triggering a joint police-health investigation.

Genomic sequencing has linked her case to a man, in his 30s, who returned to Queensland on December 30 after travelling from Ghana and was in quarantine at the Grand Chancellor.

He’s the first known case of the UK variant, dubbed B117, in Queensland.

His partner has also tested positive to B117.

The Hotel Grand Chancellor in Brisbane, where a cleaner developed the highly contagious UK COVID-19 variant. Picture: Dan Peled

All four cases linked to the Grand Chancellor are in hospital in negative pressure rooms.

Queensland Deputy Police Commissioner Steve Gollschewski said detectives had begun an investigation into how the cleaner may have become infected by the traveller.

“There is CCTV that we’ll have to go through … probably four days’ worth,” he said.

Police will develop a detailed timeline from when Queensland’s first confirmed case of the UK variant entered the quarantine system on December 30 to January 2, the cleaner’s last shift at the Hotel Grand Chancellor.

“We’re trying to work out the nexus between those two people and how it may have been transmitted,” Mr Gollschewski said.

Deputy Commissioner Steve Gollschewski. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Josh Woning

“It will be a complete reconstruction of everything that’s happened so that we can understand the whole process.

“We will absolutely look at everything in the hotel setting. That’s a detailed piece of work.”

The cleaner’s positive test resulted in a three-day lockdown of Greater Brisbane after health authorities learned she had the UK variant – the first confirmed case in Australia of B117 being found in the community.

She was unknowingly infectious for about five days before being diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and being placed in isolation.

Queensland Chief Health Officer Dr Jeannette Young. Photo: Tara Croser.

Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young said the investigation may never find how the cleaner contracted the virus.

“They’re looking at all possible options,” she said.

Dr Young said that under hotel quarantine protocols, all staff working on the same floors as returned travellers were required to wear personal protective equipment, such as masks.

She has previously said the issue of whether the cleaner was wearing full PPE while working at the Grand Chancellor was one for the investigation.

Queenslanders are urged to “immediately” get tested, and to alert clinic staff, if they were at the following venues, visited by either the cleaner or her partner, at these times:

January 3: Woolworths, Calamvale Central Shopping Centre, 11am-midday.

January 5: Coles Sunnybank Hills, 7.30am-8am.

January 5: Nextra Newsagent, Sunnybank Hills, 8am-8.15am.

January 5: Bunnings Acacia Ridge, 2-2.40pm.

January 6: Sunnybank Cellars, Hellawell Road, Sunnybank Hills, 2.05-2.15pm.

Originally published as Police to sift through four days of CCTV to probe how hotel quarantine worker got COVID