Did quarantine worker spread Covid-19 to hotel guest?
A quarantine worker may have transmitted the Covid-19 virus from one infected person to another quarantine guest via an object or on themselves. A quarantine worker may have transmitted the Covid-19 virus from one infected person to another quarantine guest via an object or on themselves. Queensland health authorities are investigating whether a quarantine worker transmitted the Covid-19 virus from an infected person staying at Brisbane's Four Points Hotel to another guest on a different floor. Contact tracers suspect the worker has acted as an intermediary in spreading the virus from one hotel guest to another inside the quarantine facility "via an object or on themselves", while not personally becoming infected. But health sources say investigations are ongoing and it's too early to definitively say how transmission occurred. They believe airborne spread is unlikely. Brisbanes Four Points Hotel, where a female flight crew attendant is believed to have contracted the Covid-19 virus, while in hotel quarantine. Picture: David Clark. Genomic sequencing yesterday confirmed a woman who spent four hours out and about in Brisbane at the weekend had the Alpha variant of the virus. The sequence is identical to a cabin crew member who tested positive to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, while staying on a separate floor of the same quarantine hotel. The two guests are not believed to have had any direct contact with each other, flying into Brisbane on separate flights, but early indications suggest the virus was spread via surface contact - known as fomite transmission. Infectious disease physician Paul Griffin said the virus could have spread when both guests touched "some kind of shared equipment", such as during food delivery. Speaking after national cabinet yesterday, Australia's Chief Medical Officer Professor Paul Kelly speculated a hotel staff member may have transmitted the virus from one hotel floor to another, in what he suggested was a "world first". "It is unusual," he said. "If I was a betting man, I would suggest that it has something to do with staff movement but that's really a matter for Queensland to investigate," he said. Although hotel quarantine staff should all have received their Covid-19 vaccine shots, which protects them from serious illness if they are infected with the virus, they are still at risk of passing it on to someone else. Brisbanes Four Points Hotel in Mary Street, where a flight crew member is believed to have caught the Covid-19 virus from a guest staying on a separate floor. Picture: David Clark. Four Points Hotel staff were being retested yesterday after the female flight crew member tested positive to the pandemic virus hours after leaving hotel quarantine at 9am on Saturday. The woman spent between 4-4.30pm at the Brisbane Airport DFO, wandered around the Brisbane CBD from 5-6pm and then had dinner at the Portuguese Family Centre from 7-7.50pm, when she was contacted about her positive Covid-19 test and went to hospital. Dr Young said anyone who had visited the DFO Cotton On store between 4.10-4.30pm on Saturday must self-quarantine and complete a Queensland Health online contact tracing form. Associate Professor Griffin said the case would renew discussion about dedicated quarantine facilities. "I think it's something we should strongly consider," he said. "But we need to make sure we don't think of it as a silver bullet. We still need to get our other mitigation strategies right. "I don't think we're yet to fully utilize the mitigation strategies we have in place, having seen recently (in Sydney) people who weren't vaccinated driving returned travellers, for example. There's room for improvement." Prof Griffin said the best way for people to protect themselves, and others, against the virus was to have their two COVID-19 shots of vaccine. "It's highly effective and it's something we can do quickly," he said. Dr Young said five more people had tested positive to the pandemic virus in the 24 hours to yesterday morning in Queensland, all of them detected in hotel quarantine. Queensland still has 32 active cases of the virus.