Hotel quarantine shake-up after mystery positive

The cause of a local case in a 26-year-old Noble Park man is still unknown after the employee returned a negative test on his last day of work and tested positive five days later.But the case has prompted immediate action to improve the program, while experts believe more can be done.Recent infections in hotel quarantine have highlighted that the coronavirus can be spread through the air, with epidemiologists calling for a rethink on the program to ­address how the virus moves.Over the past six months, infections linked back to hotel quarantine have been discovered in almost every capital city across Australia.In most cases, staff and travellers had all acted within the rules but outbreaks, particularly of the more transmissible UK strain, still managed to occur.

Premier Daniel Andrews said CCTV footage showed the worker did not appear to have done anything wrong and highlighted the challenge of fighting new coronavirus strains. “One thing we can’t rule out is aerosol transmission, the airborne transmission of this,” he said.

Mr Andrews said he was open to considering a pause on international arrivals while working on how to deal with new disease variants.He said he was also happy to discuss the benefits of regional and rural quarantine facilities, to remove outbreaks from high population areas, with Prime Minister Scott Morrison but said the idea came with its own challenges.“You can put it 50km from where we are standing now or 500km, but there will be people there, too, and the virus spreads,” he said.“I think geographic location alone is not necessarily the biggest issue here.”
Ideas to reduce quarantine outbreaks
Mr Morrison said hotels remained “the most effective way” to deliver large-scale quarantine arrangements. “That remains the advice I have from my experts. And the alternative is not clear to me,” he said.Mr Morrison has commissioned the Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly and the nation’s health officials to update hotel quarantine’s risk assessment, based on the emergence of mutant COVID strains.University of Melbourne epidemiologist Professor Nancy Baxter said it was vital authorities took better consideration of airflow when planning improvements.“COVID-19 is taking advantage of the gaps that we already have in the system,” she said. “We need airflow experts to show us how we protect workers better from an airborne virus.“We also have people contracting the virus in the hotel so when you arrive you should be vaccinated. It is a relatively high risk environment for both staff and travellers.”Monash University’s Professor Paul Komesaroff said no system could ever be 100 per cent secure.“It is stunning to think infections can open from someone opening the door,” he said.
kieran.rooney@news.com.au