No new COVID-19 cases in Victoria as authorities await genomic testing
Victoria has recorded no new cases of COVID-19 in the community or in quarantine hotels, as health authorities await genomic testing to establish the source of a second quarantine hotel worker’s infection.
The zero cases come after 12,816 tests carried out across the state on Monday.
At least 80 hotel quarantine workers who work at the Holiday Inn at Melbourne Airport have been identified as close contacts to their colleague in her 50s who tested positive late on Sunday.
A further 17 non-work close contacts were also identified on Monday, taking the number of people being tested and isolated close to 100.
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.
Results of genomic sequencing are expected late on Tuesday and will establish whether the woman has been infected with a more contagious strain of COVID-19.
It is also hoped the sequencing will 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 infectious diseases experts now believe mutant variants of the virus could be a factor.
The two other recent infections in quarantine hotels have already been confirmed to be the more infectious British variant of COVID-19, which prompted the Andrews government to tighten hotel quarantine rules last week.
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.
Epidemiologists have raised concerns that these positive cases may be the result of airborne transmission of the virus, but Emergency Services Minister Lisa Neville said on Monday that it was too soon to confirm the source of the latest case.
The Holiday Inn at Melbourne Airport where the female hotel quarantine worker contracted the virus.Credit:Penny Stephens
Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt hosed down suggestions that a major overhaul to the current quarantine hotel model was needed, saying that some case leakages were 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.”
Rachael Dexter is a breaking news reporter at The Age.