As The BFD reported recently, the Victorian government is teetering on the edge of making exactly the same mistakes which resulted in the Wuhan plague outbreak last year. The outbreak which resulted in the government imposing the first military curfew in Melbourne’s history, and plainclothes goons handcuffing a pregnant mother in her own home over a Facebook post.
When Victoria’s outbreak subsided, no thanks to the Andrews government’s draconian response, it might have been hoped that the government and bureaucracy would have learned from the fiasco.
Clearly not.
When just a handful of new cases emerged, Victoria’s responses once again buckled under pressure. The government repeatedly named the wrong exposure sites, its testing regime fell apart, and, once again, draconian lockdowns were imposed.
Now, the spectre of hotel quarantine, the cause of almost the entire previous outbreak, is back to haunt Victoria.
A nurse and a police officer working at a Melbourne quarantine hotel have returned positive preliminary COVID-19 tests, leading to 41 other workers being stood down while they await their own test results.
It was precisely such failures in hotel quarantine which caused 99% of the infections in the last outbreak.
And, yet again, the Victorian government is resorting to secrecy.
The Victorian government has yet to publicly announce the suspected transmission between returning travellers to staff at the Holiday Inn hotel.
But documents seen by The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald show the nurse and police officer returned positive saliva swabs over the weekend[…]
The Alfred Health nurse worked in a “front of house” role at the hotel and was responsible for checking temperatures on those arriving there. She wore full personal protective equipment and a face shield.
But remember – wear that mask!
Alfred Health has stood down 36 staff at the hotel, including 33 nurses and three cleaning staff.
At least four other Victoria Police members have been put into isolation after dining with the officer who returned the positive saliva swab.
Sydney Morning Herald
Last year, it was untrained security guards at the quarantine hotel nipping next door for some KFC during shifts, and returning home to spread the virus.
The Victorian government seems chronically incapable of managing its quarantine regime – but premier “Dictator Dan” Andrews will no doubt be no slouch in locking up his state again.
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