Page 278 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 9 February 2021
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As emerging international evidence showed that these variants of COVID-19 were likely to be more transmissible, National Cabinet met on 8 January 2021 to discuss Australia’s plan to manage these variants. The commonwealth Chief Medical Officer confirmed that the UK variant has a higher transmissibility and is rapidly becoming the dominant virus in the UK. Australia is now among more than 30 countries across the world that have experienced confirmed occurrences of this variant.
Our response continues to be closely guided by the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee, AHPPC, which has recommended that additional precautions are necessary to reduce the risk of these variants entering the Australian community. Recent events here and abroad demonstrate that we will continue to see outbreaks occur over the coming months; however, we are well placed to respond and will continue working as hard as ever in our response to COVID-19 through this phase of the pandemic.
Just last week, on 3 February, Victoria recorded a new case of COVID-19 in a hotel quarantine worker. The worker last worked at the Grand Hyatt hotel on 29 January 2021 and was tested at the end of their shift, returning a negative result. Following that test, the worker developed symptoms and was tested again on 2 February 2021 and returned a positive result.
Once this case was publicly notified, the ACT moved quickly and put in place a public health direction listing exposure sites identified by the Victorian government as COVID-19-affected areas. A new public health direction came into effect on 4 February and requires any person who was present at the listed exposure sites to self-isolate, get tested and remain in isolation for 14 days. At this stage there is no evidence to suggest that the hotel quarantine worker breached any COVID-19 safety protocols, and ACT Health is continuing to monitor the progress of investigations into this case.
Following events yesterday, with another new case notified in Victoria, the public health direction has been updated to include the new tier 1 public exposure sites identified by the Victorian government. We have also seen over the past few days another case in New South Wales in a person who had been in the community while infectious. I can advise that the Chief Health Officer is closely monitoring the situation and in close communication with her New South Wales colleagues.
As more information becomes available, the ACT government will advise the community. Our current advice is to follow the New South Wales health advice. That is as follows. If Canberrans have been in a location identified by New South Wales as requiring testing and quarantine, they should get tested and quarantine. If people have been in a location where the New South Wales advice is to get tested and isolate to await their test result, then we ask them to please do that. And if the New South Wales health advice is to monitor for symptoms, we ask people to please be vigilant in doing so.
As members will be aware, this is not the first case in New South Wales over the past couple of months to raise some concern. As I mentioned earlier, a new cluster of cases
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