Erased hotel CCTV stopped Delta outbreak probe in its tracks - The Age

CCTV footage that could have explained how the Delta variant of COVID-19 seeped into Melbourne was deleted, meaning a key method of investigating a hotel quarantine leak was unable to be used.

In previous outbreaks, such as the one at the Holiday Inn in February, CCTV has been crucial in identifying incidents in hotels that could have led to transmission between staff and travellers or between travellers in nearby rooms.

Alfred Health runs the Flinders Lane “hot” hotel.Credit:Chris Hopkins

But The Age can reveal footage that could have yielded visual evidence was erased by Alfred Health, according to two health and government sources speaking anonymously because they were not permitted to do so publicly.

Alfred Health, which runs the hotels where infected people stay during their time in the quarantine system, deleted the tapes before authorities identified the first case in the outbreak and began investigating. The group’s policy is to clear all CCTV footage after about two weeks.

The state’s health and quarantine officials have spent the past 10 days trying to determine how a man who carried the Delta variant when he arrived in Melbourne on April 8 infected another person who spread it into the community, spawning an outbreak that forced the extension of the recent circuit-breaker lockdown.

The most probable scenarios, health officials have stated, were that the man who flew from Sri Lanka passed the virus to someone involved in the transport to a hotel, or a staff member within the hotel itself.

Acting Premier James Merlino, Health Minister Martin Foley, Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton and his deputy Allan Cheng have all said CCTV was being examined as part of the outbreak. CCTV was available from the traveller’s one-day stay at the Novotel, but the ministers and health chiefs omitted to mention that footage from his 13-day stay at the Holiday Inn hot was unavailable.

An Alfred Health spokesman said the group “uses CCTV as a security measure at the health hotel, with footage reviewed as required and then periodically cleared”.

“We worked closely with [government officials] to support a review of the potential scenarios that may have led to a community transmission of the virus last month.”

The man carrying the virus arrived on May 8. Authorities have all but ruled out possibilities that he was infectious when he left quarantine two weeks later or that he infected someone on the plane. Health officials assume there was a missing link between the man and the two families linked to the North Melbourne primary school who tested positive in late May along with more than a dozen others.

The inability to check whether there was an infection control breach at a hotel – which would have been the sixth in Victoria and 22nd nationwide – means the source of the first Victorian community outbreak of the more-infections Delta variant will probably remain unknown.

The Alfred-run hotels have not been the source of any known leaks and staff in the hotels use hospital-grade personal protective equipment. All staff working in the floor where the Delta case stayed tested negative but authorities probed whether there could have been a rare false negative test.

The CCTV deletion is the second Alfred Health action that has compromised the Delta outbreak inquiry. The health group has declined to use a QR code-check in system at its hotels and uses pen-and-paper instead. This slowed the efforts of contact tracers at the beginning of the outbreak.

Alfred Health will move to a QR system later this month, The Age has confirmed.

Victoria recorded one new local COVID-19 case on Friday. The person is a primary contact of a case who resides in the Southbank townhouse complex linked to nine cases. The complex was already locked down, meaning no new exposure sites have been identified.

There was also one new case in Sydney as the cluster there continued to grow, with mask wearing now compulsory across the city’s public transport network.

More than 35,000 tests and 16,710 vaccine doses were announced on Friday, and there are now 54 active cases. Victorian officials lauded the high testing numbers which they have said will be key to further easing of restrictions next week.

“This gives us cautious confidence as we ease restrictions safely across the state from today,” Mr Merlino said.

The nurse who was infected in an Epping hospital COVID ward and worked at a second hospital was also not fully vaccinated, COVID-19 response commander Jeroen Weimar said on Friday. More than 70 of the 90 close contacts across the two hospitals have tested negative so far.

Mr Weimar met with hospital chief executives on Friday to ensure they were following protocols that mandate certain staff work at one site only to minimise infection risk, and for staff to be vaccinated.

“Managing your huge staff cohorts and the challenges we have in our health service is not an easy matter,” he said.

“It’s not as simple as saying we just corral [cohorts of staff] in this way and that’s all you have to do.”

People from metropolitan Melbourne are not able to travel to Queensland, South Australia or Tasmania. They need to be quarantined for two weeks if they travel to Western Australia or the Northern Territory. And they must follow self-isolation and testing rules if they travel to NSW or the ACT after being at an exposure site.

Queensland police have fined a Melbourne couple who tested positive to COVID-19 on the Sunshine Coast more than $4000 each for allegedly lying on their border declaration passes.

The couple allegedly travelled to Queensland via Goondiwindi on June 5 after having been in Victoria. Police allege they lied on their border passes, sparking a major contact tracing effort across south-east Queensland.

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2021-06-18 19:00:00Z
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