The inquiry into Victoria’s COVID-19 quarantine hotels scandal has heard poor cleaning efforts and lack of infection-control training increased the risk of the virus escaping into the community | noeltowell TammyMills1
The inquiry was shown text messages from the Victorian president of the Australian Medical Association expressing frustration at the state Health Department after he raised concerns about the quarantine program with officials in mid-April.The head of the department's investigation into the Rydges on Swanston outbreak, Dr Simon Crouch, told the inquiry he thought early on that the hotel environment could have been causing transmission.
Counsel assisting the inquiry Ben Ihle put it to Dr Crouch that conditions at Rydges on Swanston made a wider outbreak not only likely but inevitable. Mr Ihle repeatedly put it to Dr Crouch and to his Health Department colleague Sarah McGuinness that an opportunity may have been lost to control the outbreak by isolating workers from Rydges earlier. Dr McGuinness agreed the decision "may have had an impact".Another Health Department expert, senior medical adviser Dr Clare Looker, told the inquiry in a witness statement that the demographic profile of the private security workforce made it more difficult to control the outbreak.
"They were also a young, fit and socially active cohort and tended not to seek testing even if symptomatic until it was required on day 11 of their quarantine period."
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