The Australian Medical Association has slammed the management of Western Australia’s hotel management system after genomic sequencing suggested that a security guard acquired the virus from a returned US traveler.
On Saturday last week, health authorities in Western Australia detected the “Pan Pacific cluster” after routine testing of a security guard working at the Pan Pacific Hotel quarantine site. The guard and two of his housemates, who work as food delivery drivers, tested positive.
Yesterday, Western Australia Premier Mark McGowan said that the security guard did not contract COVID-19 due to ventilation issues at the hotel — a common cause of other quarantine outbreaks.
Instead, genomic sequencing suggested that the guard — referred to as “case No. 1001” — acquired the virus from a traveler returning from the US.
“He has proven positive to the US variant, which is identical to the person who visited from the United States and was transferred to the hotel on the same day as case No. 1001 was working,” McGowan said. “So we suspect that he acquired the virus from that person, although we don’t know how.”
The Pan Pacific outbreak is the second quarantine outbreak in as many weeks in Western Australia. An earlier incident at Perth’s Mercure Hotel triggered a three-day lockdown over the Anzac Day long weekend.
The Australian Medical Association’s Western Australian president, Andrew Miller, criticized the management of hotel quarantine, saying that private security guards should not be left to look after positive cases in stuffy conditions and with inadequate personal protective equipment (PPE).
Positive cases should be moved out of hotel quarantine and into dedicated facilities, where they can be cared for by professional medical and quarantine teams, Miller added.
“I think the people who own the hotels are trying to do the right thing. But it’s the management from the health department specifically — the guidelines and the enforcement around these private security guard companies,” Miller said. “It’s all a bit too much at arm’s length. We need quarantine professionals at least for the people who are proven positive. Once they’ve proven positive, get them out of there — get them into air-gapped quarantine, with professional people, nurses, doctors and full PPE.”
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a
RSS