Queensland tightens border rules as Holiday Inn COVID-19 cluster grows

Anyone who has visited an exposure site during the times listed by the health department will not be allowed to enter Queensland.

Queensland Deputy Premier Steven Miles said the declarations would help the state government be “a bit less reliant” on getting information from airlines.

It comes as South Australian slammed its border shut to Greater Melbourne last night after the Holiday Inn outbreak grew to eight cases on Wednesday.

The Holiday Inn was emptied and 48 guests were transferred to the Pullman Hotel in Melbourne’s CBD on Wednesday morning.

Transport Infrastructure Minister Jacinta Allan said one of the two cases confirmed on Wednesday afternoon involved a person residing in the Coburg, Pascoe Vale and Reservoir catchment area, where fragments of the virus had been detected in wastewater.

“The way you can get on top of this quickly is you can lock down the primary and secondary contacts quickly, get people tested and have those tests turned around as quickly as possible [and] undertake rigorous contact tracing,” said Ms Allan during a press conference on Thursday morning.

“That does put into context that unexpected wastewater detection that the Minister of Health spoke of yesterday,” she said of the case involving a person who had tested positive after having left hotel quarantine.

Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton on Wednesday said the hotel outbreak was now believed to have started after a man used a nebuliser for asthma in his room. That man is now fighting for life with COVID-19 in hospital.

Ms Allan said there was no clear timeline yet for when the Holiday Inn would reopen after “terminal cleaning”.

Late on Wednesday night, the Department of Health upgraded advice for anyone who attended the Sunbury Square Shopping Centre last Friday between 3.40pm and 4.30pm to get tested “urgently”.

Prior to the update, only customers who attended a handful of specific shops inside the centre were being urged to get tested.

Meanwhile, South Australian police issued a directive late Wednesday night preventing anyone from Greater Melbourne and Sunbury from entering the state. Exemptions are available for essential travellers, SA residents, people escaping domestic violence, and those who are relocating.

South Australian Police Commissioner Grant Stevens said there was concern that the virus may have already entered his state.

“That’s a real possibility and it’s one thing we’re very cautious about,” he told Melbourne radio station 3AW.

Anyone in South Australia who had undertaken hotel quarantine at the Holiday Inn on or after January 27 - or is a close contact of someone who had done so - has been directed to undergo 14 days of quarantine immediately.

No other states have moved to prevent Victorians from travelling interstate.

The two cases discovered on Wednesday involved a guest at the Holiday Inn at Melbourne Airport who had tested positive after completing their two-weeks of quarantine at the hotel and another worker.

In total, there are now eight cases linked to the hotel: three members of a family who tested positive for the UK strain of the virus, two former guests and three hotel quarantine workers.

Ms Allan confirmed that one of those, a food and beverage worker who waited three days to get tested after developing symptoms on Saturday, was an employee of the Holiday Inn.

The worker’s movements in the community while infectious has triggered the host of possible exposure sites around Sunbury.

“That food and beverage worker was employed by the hotel and in turn, the Holiday Inn is contracted directly by COVID-19 Quarantine Victoria,” Ms Allan said.

‘We cannot wait any longer’: AMA slams poor PPE standards

Australian Medical Association President Dr Omar Khorshid said on Wednesday that “lives were at risk” with ongoing leaks in quarantine, and claimed the formal Infection Control Expert Group advising the federal government had “failed in its duties to date”.

“Last September, [Health] Minister [Greg] Hunt committed to reviewing guidelines for protecting healthcare workers from COVID-19, announcing a partnership between ICEG and the National COVID-19 Evidence Taskforce, specifically focussing on the question of airborne spread,” he said.

“It’s been almost six months and Infection Prevention and Control Panel is yet to produce the goods. We cannot wait any longer for ICEG to act.“

Dr Khorshid called on Ministers via the National Cabinet to push hard for better airflow in quarantine hotels as well as N95 masks and eye protection for all workers in hotel quarantine across the country.

The AMA has also claimed the outbreak is evidence of a national failure to provide hotel quarantine workers with protective equipment for aerosol transmission of the virus.

Doctor questions the nebuliser theory

At least one expert has expressed scepticism over the working theory, detailed by Premier Daniel Andrews on Wednesday, that a nebuliser was to blame for the spread.

Professor Bruce Thompson, Dean of Health Sciences at Swinburne University and a respiratory expert, said the particles emitted by a nebuliser were “quite large”.

“Therefore it’s heavy and so it will tend to [settle] very, very quickly within the room,” he told 3AW.

“Even if a little bit actually got into the air-conditioning system and travelled down the corridor…. How viable is that virus? And if you only get one little particle, it’s not going to do a whole lot.

“So it is a very different construct inhaling a little bit of particles as opposed to giving someone a whopping big kiss with virus - you’re going to get it then but in this case, probably highly unlikely.”

Wastewater alert remains in place

Meanwhile, residents of Roxburgh Park, Westmeadows, Glenroy, Reservoir and Coburg are still on alert after COVID-19 fragments were “unexpectedly” detected in wastewater earlier this week.

Anyone with symptoms in that area is being urged to get tested, especially in light of one of Wednesday’s cases residing in the Coburg-Pascoe Vale-Reservoir catchment area.