A second Melbourne hotel quarantine worker to contract COVID-19 also has the highly contagious UK variant of the virus, genomic sequencing has confirmed.
Victoria recorded no new cases of COVID-19 in the community or in quarantine hotels on Tuesday, but Premier Daniel Andrews revealed genomic testing confirmed the woman in her 50s who worked at the Holiday Inn at Melbourne Airport has the UK strain.
The woman’s case is the third quarantine leak in the past fortnight confirmed to be the more infectious British variant of COVID-19. Two other recent infections – one in a 26-year-old Grand Hyatt worker and another in a returned traveller at the Park Royal – prompted the Andrews government to tighten hotel quarantine rules last week.
Mr Andrews said health officials had a “working theory” that the cases were the result of aerosol transmission and announced the government would now pay quarantine staff to get tested on their days off. Up until now staff have only been tested when rostered on.
The daily testing for quarantine workers is not yet legally mandatory, but the Premier said he did not believe there would be any pushback from workers.
“It’ll be challenging to go and get tested on all your days off, but I’m pretty sure they’ll do it,” he said.
“As soon as we’ve got anything to update in terms of performance – how many people have been testing – we’ll be more than happy to do that.”
The Premier reiterated that CCTV reviews had shown no obvious breaches of protocols in the quarantine hotels, and left the door open for more changes to guidelines for hotel workers.
“I couldn’t rule out that there wouldn’t be further changes, whether it’s in the next few hours or a day or a month.”
COVID-infected returned traveller in intensive care
Victoria’s zero new cases come after 12,816 tests were carried out across the state on Monday.
For the first time in months, a COVID-positive case has been hospitalised in Victoria after a person staying in hotel quarantine was taken to intensive care.
“That’s a returned traveller, not a community case but, of course, we send our best wishes to that person and their family,” Mr Andrews said.
The last time someone was in hospital with COVID-19 in Victoria was November 22 last year, and the last time a patient was in intensive care with the virus was October 10.
More than 150 close contacts of Holiday Inn worker in isolation
Meanwhile, more than 150 close contacts of the Holiday Inn worker, who tested positive on Sunday, have been identified and are isolating.
At least 136 hotel quarantine workers at the Holiday Inn have been identified as close contacts of their colleague. A further 17 non-work close contacts were also identified on Monday.
Health authorities are still awaiting test results from eight “very close” contacts of the woman.
“So family and others that are very, very close to this particular worker. They’re all isolating, they’ve all been tested,” Mr Andrews said. “We have no results back yet. We are working through those. It is fairly recent.”
No new potential COVID-19 exposure sites have been listed by the Health Department after venues the woman visited in Maidstone, Taylors Lakes and Sunshine were identified in the early hours of Monday morning.
Aerosol transmission the ‘working theory’, Andrews says
It is hoped the genomic sequencing will also give authorities clues as to how the woman, who wore a surgical mask and face shield and spoke to hotel residents through a perspex screen, contracted the virus in the “cold” hotel, which is not a dedicated health hotel for confirmed COVID-19 cases.
The woman’s case is the third reported leak within the state’s hotel quarantine system this month, and epidemiologists have raised concerns they may be the result of airborne transmission of the virus.
A 26-year-old hotel residential support officer, who had been working at the Grand Hyatt Hotel for the Australian Open, tested positive last Wednesday night. And a returned traveller who was staying at the Park Royal quarantine hotel at Melbourne Airport was infected last week by a family of five after viral particles spread from their room.
Victorian authorities also have a “working theory” that the cases are the result of aerosol transmission, Mr Andrews said.
He said there was still “no definitive advice” confirming airborne transmission, but he acknowledged that Victoria’s public health team was concerned about it.
The Holiday Inn at Melbourne Airport where the female hotel quarantine worker contracted the virus.Credit:Penny Stephens
“[There’s] no definitive advice, but there’s a working theory and very significant concerns about aerosol transmission, particularly of these… [more] infectious strains. They do present us with a very significant challenge,” he said.
The Premier defended Victoria’s stringent and evolving quarantine protocols.
“As this virus changes, then our public health response has to change,” he said.
“We’ve had engineering reviews of all the airconditioning systems in all the hotels that we use. We’ve ripped out the airconditioning in a number of these places and put new, new systems in, we’ve changed the way air flows.
“We rip up all the carpet in the common areas – so [in] hallways for instance – and lino [linoleum] is put down, so we can clean shared spaces where there could be a transmission to industrial standards.”
Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt has also hosed down suggestions that a major overhaul to the current quarantine hotel model was needed, saying that some case leakages are inevitable and accounted for by other measures.
“We have said since the earliest days a year ago, that there would be cases,” he said on Monday.
“We have always said hotel quarantine is the inner ring of containment, followed by testing, tracing, and distancing. Where anybody indicates that there is only one line of defence, that would be inaccurate.”
Premier Daniel Andrews addresses the media on Tuesday.Credit:Justin McManus
New gathering restrictions to stay ‘for some time’
Mr Andrews said the 15-person limit on household visitors each day was likely to be in place for some time while health authorities deal with the implications of the highly virulent UK strain.
He was more circumspect about how long Victorians would be required to wear masks in indoor public places and workplaces, saying they had played “an important role” in recent outbreaks.
“I apologise to the community that there is a degree of discomfort, but it’s nothing compared to what this getting away from us would look like and feel like,” Mr Andrews said.
The Premier said he and Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton would discuss later this week the timing of allowing more workers to return to their CBD offices.
Under current restrictions, up to 50 per cent of private-sector workers and 25 per cent of public servants are allowed back into offices across the state at any one time.
The state government abruptly parked plans to allow up to 75 per cent of workers back to offices last week after the Grand Hyatt worker tested positive.
But the Premier is sceptical about whether increasing the cap to 75 per cent and eventually 100 per cent will necessarily trigger a flood of workers back to the CBD.
“It’s not every worker, it’s not five days a week, but I think there is a percentage of people whose productivity has not been harmed by [working from home],” he said.
“[For example] I will not be in the office as often as I used to be. Some meetings that I would always have done in person, I will do from home or I’ll do that from a regional office or a suburban office.
“I could be wrong in that maybe everyone will flood back to the office once we have 100 per cent [but] I doubt that.”
Professor Sutton also revealed he had tested negative to COVID-19 on Monday after isolating at home with symptoms.
“Not feeling well today - runny nose, sore throat and headache,” he tweeted about midday on Monday. “Tested for #COVID-19 – at home until I get my result. Just like 4.5 million Victorians have done.“
On Monday evening the Chief Health Officer posted a screenshot of the text alerting him to his negative result to social media.
Rachael Dexter is a breaking news reporter at The Age.
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMihwFodHRwczovL3d3dy50aGVhZ2UuY29tLmF1L25hdGlvbmFsL3ZpY3RvcmlhL25vLW5ldy1jb3ZpZC0xOS1jYXNlcy1pbi12aWN0b3JpYS1hcy1hdXRob3JpdGllcy1hd2FpdC1nZW5vbWljLXRlc3RpbmctMjAyMTAyMDktcDU3MHFyLmh0bWzSAYcBaHR0cHM6Ly9hbXAudGhlYWdlLmNvbS5hdS9uYXRpb25hbC92aWN0b3JpYS9uby1uZXctY292aWQtMTktY2FzZXMtaW4tdmljdG9yaWEtYXMtYXV0aG9yaXRpZXMtYXdhaXQtZ2Vub21pYy10ZXN0aW5nLTIwMjEwMjA5LXA1NzBxci5odG1s?oc=5
2021-02-09 00:22:00Z
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