Infected hotel worker ‘did nothing wrong’

But after scouring hours of CCTV Premier Daniel Andrews said the vision showed he was a “model employee”.“We are very grateful to him and, further to some questions last night, we can find no problem, no breach of protocol or anything of that nature in terms of his employment,” he said during Thursday’s media briefing.“This speaks to the wildly infectious nature of this virus.”Victoria recorded no new cases after the hotel worker’s case was revealed on Wednesday night.

Two family members of the 26-year-old had tested negative as health authorities wait for the results of 18 more close contacts, Mr Andrews said.While the Premier did not confirm whether or not the worker had a mutant strain of the virus, he said the virus variants posed a “big challenge” as a “hyper-infectious” strains was a threat.“(As we) keep seeing these hyper-infectious variant strains coming forward, there’s a big challenge here,” Mr Andrews said.He said airborne and aerosol transmission was also “very, very challenging”.“AHPPC (Australian Health Protection Principal Committee) has been dealing with some of these issues. No doubt this will be a feature of the report that I will give to national cabinet tomorrow,” the Premier said.“All of us work together and learn from each other.”

Mr Andrews addressed the media on Thursday morning after confirming the infection late the previous night. “There are many, many hundreds of people who have been contacted, a number of exposure sites has grown,” Mr Andrews said.“It is important people get the best information and make their decisions to go and get tested, that is the most important thing.”Health officials are now racing to determine how the man became infected but said he likely caught the diseases from a returned traveller.Genomic sequencing is under way, with results likely to come through on Friday.The Premier said the man had done nothing to breach protocols. Nineteen out of 20 close contacts of the hotel worker had been contacted and hundreds of people were in self-isolation, Mr Andrews said. But acting deputy chief health officer Allen Cheng said it’ was still “early days” for those contacts who would need to remain in isolation.

About 520 Australian Open players and staff are also considered casual contacts after completing their quarantine period at the Grand Hyatt. They’ve been asked to isolate and will be tested on Thursday. Once that is complete they will be ruled out of the inquiry.The Victorian government swiftly reimposed the restrictions from before New Year’s Eve. This means the cap on private gatherings in homes has been reduced from 30 to 15 people, masks must be worn indoors and an expansion of office capacity that was due to be introduced on Monday is on hold.