Pictures have emerged of Melbourne hotel quarantine guests walking to a convenience store, in the latest revelations from Victoria’s inquiry into its hotel quarantine program.
The inquiry also heard on Tuesday from an epidemiologist who said she saw a Victorian health department employee potentially “cross-contaminating” by doing paperwork in a security guard room.
Documents published online, given to the inquiry by Victoria police, revealed that the Victoria police commander, Tim Tully, was sent multiple emails by a former police officer who raised concerns about how private security was managing hotel quarantine.
Photographs were sent to Tully that appeared to show guests leaving their facilities at the Pan Pacific Melbourne in South Wharf, near a sign for the unfortunately named “Rona Walk”.
One email from 15 April stated: “Nigel and Tim. We have got the quarantined people out again this morning. One has tried to enter a convenience store on-site.”
One of the photos from the Victorian hotel quarantine inquiry, showing an alleged breach of quarantine at the Pan Pacific hotel in South Wharf pic.twitter.com/zcUC6o0cBP
— Naaman Zhou (@naamanzhou) September 8, 2020
Later on Tuesday, the inquiry heard from Dr Sarah McGuinness, an epidemiologist who was brought in to help with the response to outbreaks at the Rydges and Stamford Plaza hotels.
McGuiness wrote in a report, after the Stamford Plaza hotel outbreak, that hotel staff and security guards were “not adequately educated in hand hygiene and PPE”.
She also wrote that she “saw a DHHS officer inside a security guard room handling paperwork … before returning to a room with nursing PCA and DHHS staff”.
McGuiness told the inquiry that she noted this down because it had “the potential for cross-contamination between different employee groups”.
A senior Victorian health official, Dr Simon Crouch, also admitted he underestimated the role that contaminated objects played in the outbreaks.
Crouch, who was the team leader of outbreak management for the Rydges and Stamford Plaza hotel outbreaks, told the inquiry that fomite transmission – when diseases are passed on via objects – played a “larger role” than initially thought.
As of 1 May, Crouch wrote that fomite transmission was “not a significant source of transmission for local outbreaks”, the inquiry heard. But on Tuesday, he told the inquiry he had revised that opinion.
“This was prior to the Rydges [outbreak] and the experience of the Rydges and Stamford Plaza hotels has changed my opinion on that more,” he said.
“As of 1 May, I was aware fomite transmission was a possibility ... but we didn’t have much evidence from the cases and outbreaks we had seen at that point in Victoria that it had played a significant role.
“However, since then, it does appear that fomite transmission plays a larger role than I would have given it credit at that point.”
Crouch also said he could not identify a person in charge of infection prevention at either the Rydges or Stamford Plaza hotels prior to the outbreaks.
A report, commissioned after the outbreaks and tendered to the inquiry, also revealed that staff at the hotels were working multiple jobs at different locations, re-using PPE, including storing masks in their pockets, and not social distancing from each other.
A report from July found that there was “a high likelihood of fomite spread from poor cleaning products being utilised, poor PPE used by security staff, and a lack of education surround cleaning practices”.
The counsel assisting the inquiry, Ben Ihle, asked Crouch whether it seemed that spread from the hotels was “inevitable” under these conditions.
“Given what we now know ... there was a high risk of transmission,” Crouch said.
“The decisions of the outbreak management team today would likely be different,” he said.
The inquiry also heard Crouch did not know “the precise manner” in which the outbreak squads at the two hotels managed it on the ground, despite him being the coordinator of both.
Ihle, asked him: “How is that you have said in your statement that you are not aware of the precise manner in which the squad performs its functions or the protocols under which they operate?”
Crouch said that the broad protocols were known, but that the “fine details” of what the squad did “on the ground” was under another coordinator and not within his remit.
“You, as the outbreak management team leader, were not aware of the precise manner in which the squad performs its functions, and you do not know, for example, the protocols under which they operate,” Ihle said.
