The comments came after a heated exchange with Western Australian Greens MP Rachel Siewert, who angrily accused the federal government of lagging behind on hotel quarantine protection strategies.In a Senate Select Committee hearing into the government’s response to the pandemic on Tuesday evening, Ms Siewert questioned its handling of hotel quarantine and asked why hotel transmission guidelines hadn’t been improved.Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly said the system had been extensively reviewed, and numerous forms of protection worked like a “Swiss cheese model” in stopping the virus from spreading.“There can be holes in each of the protections, but as long as they don’t line up, you’ll be fine,” Professor Kelly said.“There’s a whole range of things you can do to protect people in hotel quarantine, including arrival numbers, pre-departure testing, good hotel infrastructure, ventilation, post-arrival testing, red and green zones, training and education for staff, people who do continuous auditing, hand hygiene and finally masks, as well as our new weapon which is the use of vaccination.“So that’s the sort of model we’re looking at – ways you can protect people and decrease the chance of transmission in quarantine and transmission into the community.”Department of Health secretary Brendan Murphy reiterated there were broad guidelines that were “adequate” in managing the virus in hotel quarantine.“Well it doesn’t seem very adequate to me given that we’ve just come out of lockdown here in WA,” Ms Siewert fired back.“I’m sorry, we’ve had it happen in multiple states – they don’t seem to be adequate.”Professor Kelly said there would always be infections in hotel quarantine.“We expect people who come into quarantine to have an infection and we try our best to keep it out, but there will always be infection,” he said.The comments come as the federal government faces mounting pressure to assist the states in managing quarantine, following outbreaks that leaked out of hotels in NSW, Victoria and most recently WA.Both Victoria and NSW have requested the commonwealth come up with an alternative form of quarantine, claiming hotels in the city weren’t effective in controlling the virus.Despite calls for the government to establish more open air Howard Springs-type facilities, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has publicly backed the current system.Professor Kelly told the Senate hearing the government currently had “no plans” to look at alternative facilities.“Hotel quarantine was one of the key decisions made early in the pandemic to protect Australians and it’s been successful,” he said.“Of course there has been some incursions and they’ve been widely publicised, but in general terms it’s been very safe. And we’ve continued to learn how to make it more successful and safe as we’ve gone on.”
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