Coronavirus: Third Wave Fears in Victoria, Australia

The second wave of coronavirus in Australia’s hardest-hit state, Victoria, has been attributed to the failed quarantine of the Melbourne hotel. And now there is concern that a disaster will repeat itself.

An investigation into Victoria’s hotel quarantine program concluded its evidentiary phase after testimony from former state Health Minister Jenny Mikakos and Prime Minister Daniel Andrews last week.

In submissions Monday, the lawyer who assisted in the investigation, Ben Ilhe, said the investigation could “comfortably find that the hotel quarantine program in Victoria did not achieve its primary objective.”

Thus, he said, hotels became “a feeding ground for the spread of Covid-19 in the community.”

“The failure of the hotel quarantine program to contain this virus is today responsible for the death of 768 people and the infection of 18,490 [people],” he said.

The comments were a damning assessment of the management of the program, a program that the prime minister said was being overseen by his former health minister.

It says changes have been made to ensure the safety of Victorians in the hotel quarantine, but as the state falls below 300 active cases for the first time in months, there are new concerns.

This week it emerged that up to nine hotel quarantine workers could have contracted coronavirus at work since late July, rather than in the community, as previously thought.

Of the nine who were infected, five were Spotless employees, one was a staff member of the Department of Health and Human Services and two worked for Alfred Health.

Victoria’s deputy health director Allen Cheng told reporters Thursday that investigations were underway to determine exactly when and how the nine were infected.

“We know that it is not part of a large outbreak because they are at different times and places, but I understand that the investigation is ongoing,” he said.

ABC reports that Spotless workers at the Novotel Melbourne South Wharf hotel were laid off in the middle of a shift on Wednesday amid concerns about infection control.

Opposition leader Michael O’Brien shared concerns about the start of a third wave in Victoria, saying it is “absolutely disgraceful” that DHHS continues to use private contractors at a quarantined hotel.

“After 800 deaths, the least we deserve from this prime minister is honesty and competence and this story shows that we have neither,” O’Brien said.

“To think that they still have private security guards in the hotels, that they still don’t do proper infection control, that they still put the community at risk, this is a government that just doesn’t listen and doesn’t learn.”

But health director Brett Sutton insists he will wait for the results of genomic tests before assuming workers were infected at work.

“If genomic testing is successful, that indicates otherwise, we would re-evaluate it on that basis, but that has yet to be accomplished,” he said.

“We have had 20,000 cases in Victoria, they have been in staff environments as cleaners and as security, but they have detected it in the community.”

Andrews, who has overseen a difficult few weeks reducing the number of cases, says the hotel’s quarantine program is undergoing a process of change.

“It is not necessarily resolved and it will continue to evolve,” he told reporters.

The hotel’s quarantine investigation is expected to deliver its findings in November.