International flights into Melbourne will be diverted for two weeks while Corrections Victoria supervises a reset of the hotel quarantine program. But how did it get to this point?
As Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews announced the state would be reimposing lockdowns on some Melbourne postcodes from Thursday, he said failures in the state's hotel quarantine program were a key factor in dozens of coronavirus cases.
The government unit responsible for prisons will now oversee a "reset" of the hotel quarantine program and no new travellers will be hosted in Victoria for the next two weeks.The Premier said genomic sequencing revealed a number of coronavirus cases can be linked to "staff members in hotel quarantine breaching well-known and well-understood infection control protocols".
He said several infections that emerged in northern Melbourne in late May and early June can be linked to the breach.Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton said dozens of cases analysed from that period link back to issues with hotel quarantine, but results on more recent cases were still coming through. Mr Andrews stressed that there was a lag time in DNA work and that the issues this recent genomic sequencing report raised were from "some weeks ago".Authorities did not detail exactly what the offending breaches were yesterday, or which staff members were involved.
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