It sounds like it’s been spreading for a while now. I do wonder when patient zero picked it up in the first place.
I would suspect that most of these cases were tested because they were close contacts, not because they randomly showed up for testing. so shouldn’t be a surprise that they were traced quickly. The real test is once the wider community starts getting tested and positives show up how quickly can they be traced.
These are the critical hours right now, what are the rumours of what moves SA will make? surely mask mandates in the workplace, and public transport, ban on in-home gatherings and lockdown of aged care is on the cards at least.
Why?
It’s already been confirmed one family member worked at the medi-hotels. Patient ‘0’ is probably from hotel quarantine. It looks like they have got onto this a lot quicker than Victoria or even New Zealand. The fact the number is quite high just proves how good the contact tracing was at tracking the close contacts down and identify close contacts. There is always this risk when your medi-hotel system is nearly at full capacity.
My point was more around when she got it. Local Patient One then. Was it last week? 10 days ago?
Would you rather they just ignore the close contacts and it spread quicker? Or would you rather SA refuse to take in international returning travellers to avoid outbreaks? Or have their borders closed to the other states due to their outbreaks? It’s not an elimination strategy.
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Of course I would never encourage them to ignore anyone who might’ve had even the tiniest exposure to the virus.
Though I would suggest for this to happen if it means that we’re getting less flights from hotspots like India. Sure we’ve had less flights than QLD and WA but we also had quite a lot of repatriation flights from places like India which to the best of my understanding, is still a hotspot which is why we’ve been seeing a consistent increase in hotel quarantine cases, thus increasing the risk of exposure for medi hotel workers and leading to outbreaks like this.
These repat flights could surely go elsewhere like NSW or WA or QLD instead of clogging up SA’s medi-hotel system?
Anyway sorry for my rant. I think I’m just over COVID and the potential of more restrictions coming into place. I hope SA Health is going to nail this and contain this outbreak, and considering how they handled the small outbreak in August I’m optimistic.
Really hope SA can quickly figure out the initial breakdown in the “medihotel” procedures and other states can fix any flaws there - it’s clearly not just what security guards are there.
Really need to look at who gets hired too - no one who has family working in other risky settings, like aged care or prisons should be working at a hotel quarantine site.
Might need to pay people a bit more to find people in that kind of circumstance, but this sounds almost exactly like how Melbourne’s outbreak seeded and spread so far so fast.
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If this does lead to a serious outbreak i think there will start to be appetite to just cancel all inbound travel. Everyone’s had to make difficult calls this year and the stakes will be considered too high. the risk vs. reward doesn’t add up.
However NT will open its borders to Melbourne residents from November 30.
Tasmanian Premier Peter Gutwein also announced this morning that anyone from South Australia who had arrived in Tasmania from November 9 onwards, must self-isolate immediately.
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Hopefully SA will be able to get this under control before Christmas.
I can imagine the uproar if South Australians are separated from families interstate and vice-versa.
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Adelaide has had a lot of flights that have come from India. As for the outbreak. A lot of clusters have had infection rates at around 50 people. NSW had community numbers from one cluster for weeks dribbling in. 15 of those cases came from one family. We don’t know if it is just because they were all meeting. It does mean if you feel sick don’t leave the home. And always get tested. It is a huge lesson for not just all South Australians but everyone.
I really think SA Health has done a great job at getting testing done so quickly.
You can’t just fire people that already worked at these hotels.
The closing of the borders to SA just makes no sense. Are they going to do that every time there is an outbreak anywhere in the country? It just makes no sense.
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Not to alarm but I don’t think we are at the stage yet where we can say we know the source history of all 17 cases. There are 15 people linked to the one original family, but two are not.
This is not to say SA Health are not working on it, but it is a work in progress.
Part of our issue is the medi-hotels running at near capacity for a while.
Although we cannot fully confirm it, but if someone works at one of the covid hotels I think it needs to be considered that that might be the main source. The panic doesn’t help that it might have come from somewhere else.
Definitely - we just need to now see how this has propagated
We can pay them to stay home or to work at a regular hotel - it’s crazy to try and save a bit of money on wages when this going wrong shuts a whole state down.
It’s like the cleaners situation in Victoria - saying of course they work multiple sites, you can’t earn a living on a few hours a day. Well to that I say, we can’t afford not to.
We need to basically treat the employees working at the quarantine sites like they have the virus. Pay them well for it, but find people who don’t live in a big share house or work 4 jobs.
QLD are reconsidering their position on the SA border.
Yes, and anyone that has worked within a certain radius of a positive cases should be getting tested daily. Seems this hotel worker contracted it, incubated it, spread it, her 80 year old relative contracted it, incubated it, developed symptoms to the point where they are hospitalized, and it was only detected for the first time then.
Its been spreading in the community undetected for days.
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That would be great if the government could do that. I agree. But everyone knows someone that comes from a disadvantaged background. It is hard to find someone that doesn’t. You would be limiting yourself to a lot of people who can work in that system if they know someone that works in aged care. Or someone that works in a prison.
I just think testing for those people working in the quarantine system needs to be enhanced. it is a lesson we should have learnt from New Zealand. Test all workers on a regular basis. Personally I think it should be every 3 days. The test in uncomfortable but it really isn’t that bad.