A New South Wales prison inmate who was tested for Covid-19 when he was taken into custody was released on bail before the results were received confirming he was a positive case.
It took more than three days for the test on the Bathurst prison inmate to be processed, NSW corrective services confirmed, and the prison had no legal authority to detain the man after he had been bailed, despite the result remaining outstanding.
The man, 27, was taken into custody early on Saturday 7 August in Dubbo.
Later that day, he was transported to Bathurst prison, where he arrived about 4pm, and was tested as part of the admissions process with several other inmates.
On Monday, he was granted bail and is believed to have travelled to Walgett, in the state’s north-west, despite not having received his test result. On Wednesday morning, NSW corrective services were informed he had tested positive.
The inmates he travelled with from Dubbo to Bathurst had since been retested and returned negative results, a spokesperson said, but the prison remained in a “precautionary lockdown”. Test results for several prison staff were yet to be returned.
“The safety of all staff and inmates is our number one priority, and remains at the forefront of our decision-making while Covid-19 continues to pose a risk,” the spokesperson said.
The man may have travelled to Walgett via public transport – a seven-hour trip that requires an interchange in Dubbo.
No public transport routes had been listed as exposure sites, with Transport for NSW referring questions about the case to NSW Health. NSW Health had been contacted for comment.
A NSW courts spokesperson confirmed the Dubbo court was open as normal and not treated as an exposure site, despite the man spending several hours in the cells there.
Eight local government areas in western NSW, including those that contain the towns of Dubbo, Bathurst and Walgett, were in a seven-day lockdown, amid concerns about the vulnerability of local Indigenous communities to the Delta variant.
There had been four confirmed cases in the region, including the former inmate. Wastewater detection data released on 6 August for the previous week did not reveal any cases in the region.
The NSW health minister, Brad Hazzard, said earlier on Thursday that he had written to his federal counterpart, Greg Hunt, urging a greater supply of Pfizer because of his concerns that “by far the majority of Aboriginal people in that section of our state have not received the vaccine” despite being in a priority group.
The Nine Network reported on Thursday that the federal government was sending an extra 7,000 doses of Pfizer to Walgett, on top of 3,000 extra doses promised by the NSW government.
