ABC.net.au news reports:
Victoria's coronavirus crisis traced back to seven returned travellers, hotel quarantine inquiry told
By Nicholas McElroy
Ninety per cent of Victoria's current coronavirus cases can be traced back to a family of four that returned to Australia and stayed in Melbourne's Rydges on Swanston hotel, according to a key witness at the state's hotel quarantine inquiry.
Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) epidemiologist Charles Alpren said an adult in the family developed symptoms of the virus on May 9, before three others became symptomatic over the next three days.
All four members of the family eventually tested positive to COVID-19, as did three other people who worked at the hotel and showed symptoms on May 25, Dr Alpren said.
By June 18, a further 17 people connected to the hotel had tested positive and showed epidemiological links to the Rydges outbreak, he said.
"They were either people working in the hotel in a range of roles, or household or social contacts of staff members," Dr Alpren said.
"Approximately
90 per cent or more of current COVID-19 infections in Victoria can be traced to the Rydges hotel."
Dr Alpren said at the time of the Rydges outbreak, there were "few other cases of COVID-19 which had been acquired in Australia".
T
here were two smaller outbreaks that originated at the Stamford Plaza Hotel, he said — one from a man who returned to Australia on June 1, and another from a couple who landed on June 11.
About a month later, 46 people linked to the Stamford Hotel had acquired the virus in "two distinct chains of transmission".
"I know of
no links between cases in the Rydges hotel outbreak and cases involved in the Stamford Plaza outbreak," Dr Alpren said.
"It is likely that a high proportion, approximately 99 per cent of current cases of COVID-19 in Victoria have arisen from Rydges or Stamford."
As of Tuesday morning,
there were 7,274 active cases of coronavirus in Victoria.
Dr Alpren said the "transmission event or events" at the hotels were not identified.
But he noted there was "an episode of environmental contamination" in the family of four's room at Rydges on May 18.
"[The event] required assistance from nursing staff to rectify," Dr Alpren wrote in his witness statement.
"There is a suggestion that the family were approved to walk outside their room, during which they were accompanied by security guards. It is possible a transmission event or events happened at that point, however, cases have not been identified that were involved in the environmental contamination or the walk.
"Transmission could have occurred directly from the family to staff or through contamination [of] surfaces in the hotel with which staff then had contact with."
Lawyer Andrew Woods, representing Rydges Hotels, told the inquiry one of the first three staff to contract the virus from the family was a Rydges employee. The other two were not directly employed by the chain.
Because incubation times of COVID-19 patients ranged from two to 14 days, Dr Alpren said there was no evidence to suggest that the Rydges employee was responsible for passing the virus onto the other workers.
"The precise mechanism of their employment is not really something that the epidemiological investigation would need to know," he told the inquiry.
"We need to know the role they do but not exactly who employs them."
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