Private security guards enlisted to monitor returned travellers in hotel quarantine have been caught mask-less and without protective equipment despite fears that a mutant Covid super strain is on the brink of wreaking havoc on the community.
Coronavirus has escaped quarantine several times across Australia, but there is heightened concern as travellers are increasingly returning with the new UK strain, which is up to 70 times more contagious than the original.
A returned traveller quarantining in Sydney with her husband and two children shared photos of a private security guard without a mask.
The woman, who wants to remain anonymous after returning from New York, said the minder had not been wearing any PPE or face masks since they arrived.
A returned traveller quarantining in Sydney with her husband and two children shared photos of a private security guard without a mask
United Airlines crew members wave and blow kisses as they depart the Novotel Hotel in Darling Harbour on December 03. New South Wales narrowly avoided catastrophe four times in the past month due to Covid breaches in the hotel quarantine system for returned travellers
‘If you are being asked to work as a security guard in a quarantine hotel I’d be asking for the full PPE,’ she told the Daily Telegraph.
‘I’d want a proper N95 mask. My husband said something to him and he said: ”I’m socially distanced” and we called the hotel downstairs and they said we don’t hire them,’
‘We are all potentially sitting here with COVID and he’s like a sitting duck with no mask on. It’s astonishing because it only takes one weak link.’
A second returned traveller who also quarantined in Sydney in late November and early December said while nurses and police wore masks, private security guards did not.
The woman said a security guard ‘shrugged and laughed at her’ when she expressed concerns that he was not in PPE while escorting her to the hospital from her hotel room.
Health workers testing for coronavirus at Merrylands in southwest Sydney on Thursday
Victoria’s catastrophic second wave of Covid, which hit back in June and infected 20,404 people and resulted in 820 deaths, was sparked by a breach among hotel quarantine staff who caught the disease and spread it among their own local communities.
Queensland also experienced its first hotel quarantine breach last week when a hotel cleaner caught the mutant UK variant, thrusting all of Brisbane into a mandatory three day lockdown.
There are yet to be any other cases linked to that infection, but authorities remain on high alert that it is within the community.
Meanwhile New South Wales has experienced several breaches – two of which have resulted in serious outbreaks in Sydney in the last month.
All current outbreaks in the state, which threaten to derail Australia’s envy-inducing handling of the pandemic, are linked to various bungles in the important isolation system.
Queensland also experienced its first hotel quarantine breach last week when a hotel cleaner caught the mutant UK variant, thrusting all of Brisbane into a mandatory three day lockdown
The Berala cluster in Sydney’s west is the state’s most active cluster at the moment and linked to 23 cases.
Contact tracers have since linked it to a quarantine driver who contracted the virus while transporting a family from an international flight to a hotel.
They believe he gave the virus to a colleague who then visited the alcohol store and passed it on to a staff member.
Sydney’s last significant cluster in Avalon in the Northern Beaches is also believed to be linked to a separate leak from hotel quarantine.
Contact tracers said the Avalon cluster strain appeared to be similar to a virus variant detected in a quarantined American traveller who tested positive last month.
However, just how the virus spread to Avalon – sparking 150 cases, many contracted at local pubs – remains unknown.
Passengers are tested for Covid-19 at Melbourne Airport on December 20, amid fears the UK’s mutant strain could escape hotel quarantine
‘We may never find a link back,’ NSW Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant said.
A cleaner at Darling Harbour’s Novotel quarantine hotel tested positive to the virus on December 2. She has not been linked to any further cases.
Another driver, a Sydney Ground Transport employee who ferried around air crew from the airport to their hotel, tested positive on December 16, taking the number of breaches in the last month to four.
No further cases have been linked to either of the latter two escapes mentioned.
The quarantine system was brought into place on March 20 when Australia shut its borders, with only Australian citizens, permanent residents or those with special exemptions allowed in.
A member of the Australian Defence Force speaks to a Victorian Police officer outside of a hotel quarantine facility. There are fears the mutant Covid strain could leak from quarantine
It hoped to stop coronavirus flooding into the country, like was seen across the world in nations without similar measures.
But pictures showing security guards still not wearing correct protective gear has sparked fears that another – potentially even more catastrophic – outbreak is imminent.
Professor Rainer MacIntyre, head of the Biosecurity Program at the Kirby Institute explained that the risk of breaches in hotel quarantine systems are simply increasing due to the higher viral load in returned travellers.
‘Because the pandemic is getting worse, there is much more disease out there in the rest of the world,’ she said.
‘So when people return from overseas, the chance of it coming back is higher, so the risk of breach is also higher, so we will continue to see breaches.
‘The next one could be one of these mutant strains, which is much more difficult to control.’
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