"Don't think that it's something else," he said. The state's Chief Health Officer, Professor Brett Sutton, said even a "tickle in the throat", or "just a runny nose" should be the trigger to get tested. Its rapid speed and reports that some people possibly delayed getting tested while they were symptomatic have not helped.Īuthorities yesterday revealed the fifth recorded case in the cluster, which was probably the source of infection for the other 29, had likely been in the community while infectious for around 11 days. The usual transmission of coronavirus is about five to six days, but in some cases this week that timeframe had narrowed to 24 hours. It is a version of what is called the " Indian variant", and it's spreading quickly in other countries as well.Īcting Premier James Merlino said the time between people catching the virus and passing it on was "tighter than ever". Public health authorities are concerned about the "highly infectious" variant of COVID-19. "It has us on tenterhooks, it's almost every week we have this mini-crisis." "And we've seen, since November, 17 of these leaks in five mainland capital cities and I just think that's unacceptable. "It's a ridiculous argument to make, the system either works or it doesn't." "I often use the analogy that if you ran an airline and your planes only crashed one in 100 times, would you go on that airline? "And we've seen this over and over again, I'm not sure where he's getting that from. "How can he say that? I really don't understand, sitting here in Melbourne with this cluster of … cases that was all due to a breach in hotel quarantine," Professor Toole said. Professor Toole said he did not understand how Prime Minister Scott Morrison could assert that hotel quarantine was "99.99 per cent effective". "This disruption to the lives of people in Melbourne was caused by a leak from a hotel in Adelaide," he said. Mr Morrison has said the hotel quarantine system had been "99.9 per cent effective".īut epidemiologists including Michael Toole from Melbourne's Burnet Institute warned that Melbourne's latest outbreak highlighted the urgent need to overhaul the quarantine system. It's been three years and I still haven't caught it – does that mean I'm immune to COVID-19?.Scientists say these are the 12 symptoms that reveal when COVID becomes long COVID.China's 'controllable' COVID-19 surge expected to peak at 65 million cases per week.On Thursday, shortly after Victoria's lastest lockdown was announced, the Prime Minister all but backed the state's proposal for a quarantine facility, but stopped short of confirming any details. The state has earmarked a site at Mickleham in Melbourne's outer north.Īnother site near Avalon Airport south-west of Melbourne near Geelong has also been mooted, but Victoria wants federal help to fund it. Victoria has been lobbying the federal government to help it get a purpose-built quarantine facility built swiftly to strengthen the primary ring of defence that stops the virus from entering the community. It was the 17th leak from hotel quarantine in the past six months, according to federal Labor, which accuses Prime Minister Scott Morrison of inaction on national standards around quarantine ventilation and a mismanaged vaccine rollout. Download the ABC News app and subscribe to our range of news alerts for the latest on how the pandemic is impacting the world. Stay up-to-date on the coronavirus outbreak It's cold comfort for long-suffering Victorians that this time another state's hotel quarantine system is to blame. He tested positive after returning home to Melbourne and the virus spread from there, with 30 cases now linked to the cluster and 150 exposure sites across greater Melbourne, the Mornington Peninsula and a smattering of sites in regional Victoria. Victorians are paying the price for a South Australian hotel quarantine system failure, after genomic testing confirmed a returned traveller was infected while quarantining at an Adelaide medi-hotel. So what's caused the lockdown this time? Another hotel quarantine failure Then this February, leaks from hotel quarantine again plunged the state into a five-day circuit-breaker lockdown, with the infectiousness of the UK strain cited as a key concern. It led to the devastating second wave which invaded nursing homes, caused more than 800 deaths and months of heavy restrictions and lockdowns. Last year, Melbourne's hotel quarantine leaks were fuelled by a chronically under-resourced contact tracing network. Was it bad luck, bad management by state or federal authorities, or were Victorians themselves somehow to blame for becoming complacent? As the anxiety-inducing threat of yet another lockdown loomed on Wednesday, many Victorians were asking: Why do these things always seem to happen to us?
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |