The rush is on to find recent arrivals who may have been exposed to a highly contagious strain of COVID-19 in hotel quarantine, before checking out and travelling interstate.
After three returned travellers who stayed in adjacent rooms tested positive for the variant, New South Wales contact tracers are scrambling to work out if the virus has jumped between rooms, infecting guests who have now left and are potentially contagious.
It comes as a mother and child staying in a Perth quarantine hotel are suspected to have contracted COVID-19 from another family, staying in an adjacent room.
They had travelled from the UK and tested positive for the virus after a couple who had arrived from India – staying across the corridor – were diagnosed a day earlier.
There were 18 other guests on the same hotel floor who returned a negative test, and a further 16 people have been told to isolate immediately.
Back in NSW, contract tracers have ordered 36 released travellers into home isolation and are trying to contact four more.
They are concerned some have crossed state borders, potentially taking the virus with them.
“A number have gone into other states and territories and (those states) have been contacted,” NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant said on Thursday.
“We are urgently escalating contact with the remaining four. We will be happy to update you on the investigation, but at this time nothing obvious has come of that.”
Dr Chant said NSW authorities would look at spacing out hotel quarantine to only allow every second room to be occupied.
It is the second instance of suspected hotel quarantine transmission in the state within days, after two people staying in adjoining rooms at the Adina hotel both tested positive.
Meanwhile, WA Premier Mark McGowan conceded The Mercure Hotel, where the infected guests were staying, was “not one of the best” and said it would no longer be used as a quarantine hotel.
Fully vaccinated cleaner tests positive
A bizarre case of a fully vaccinated cleaner at Auckland Airport testing positive to COVID-19 has raised concerns over the efficacy of the Pfizer jab.
But a leading epidemiologist says there are three reasons why the cleaner still caught the coronavirus, despite receiving two injections.
The case came a day after quarantine-free trans-Tasman travel restarted between New Zealand and Australia under the new travel bubble arrangement.
Genomic sequences revealed the airport worker has the UK variant of COVID-19, B117.
Professor Marylouise McLaws, a UNSW epidemiology professor and adviser to the World Health Organisation, said some people are not fully protected from COVID even after receiving two doses.
“We need to find out when he was last injected,” Professor McLaws said of the Auckland cleaner.
That’s because your body needs at least 14 days to develop its maximum immune response after receiving a second dose, she said, pointing to advice from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
Until then, you won’t be fully vaccinated.
If the cleaner received his final Pfizer dose within two weeks of contracting COVID, there’s a chance his body didn’t have enough time to build up adequate immunity.
The New Daily put questions to New Zealand’s health department about the date of the cleaner’s final injection, to see if he contracted the virus within 14 days of receiving his final dose.
However, a spokesperson declined to share that information on the grounds of patient confidentiality.
The efficacy of the Pfizer jab is between 29 and 68 per cent after the first dose, and between 90 and 98 per cent at least seven days after the second dose.
That leaves between two and 10 per cent of people who may not be protected.
“The average protection for everybody is about 95 per cent,” Professor McLaws said.
Professor McLaws urged people to continue wearing face masks and shields, and to keep up good hand hygiene regardless of whether they’re fully vaccinated.
