Hotel quarantine failures in Victoria lead to COVID-19 spike
COVID-19 numbers in the state of Victoria have spiked once again, leading to stringent lockdown measures imposed by the Andrews government.
Thirty-six Victorian suburbs are now in lockdown.
Failures in the hotel quarantine program are said to have played a major role in the spread of dozens of these new corona cases.
The hotel quarantine program has now had to be reset. For the next fortnight, no new travellers are to be hosted by Victorian hotels.
According to the premier, a number of these cases can be linked to "staff members in hotel quarantine breaching well-known and well-understood infection control protocols".
There were two verified clusters in Victoria with immediate links to the hotels quarantine program. The Stamford Plaza Hotel outbreak, currently has a total of 29 cases attributed to it. The Rydges on Swanston Hotel has so far recorded 17 infections.
Mr Andrews said authorities will have a better chance to deal with this lockdown by not allowing any more people to enter hotel quarantine for the next two weeks.
Victoria will now implement three main measures to deal with issues relating to hotel quarantine and how the program is implemented.
These measures include:
- Diversion of all international flights to other major cities for the next two weeks
- The reset hotel quarantine program to be supervised by Corrections Victoria
- An inquiry into the hotel quarantine program to be led by a former judge
While there have been protocol breakdowns in this program in Victoria, the program has been a success nationally.
Mary-Louise McLaws, a professor of the UNSW epidemiology department said mandatory quarantining was why Australia has seen "far less cases and far less deaths" than some other countries.
Irit Jackson, 1st July 2020
