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.”
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘POINT OF NO RETURN’: The Caribbean nation needs increased international funding and support for a multinational force to help police tackle expanding gang violence The top UN official in Haiti on Monday sounded an alarm to the UN Security Council that escalating gang violence is liable to lead the Caribbean nation to “a point of no return.” Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Haiti Maria Isabel Salvador said that “Haiti could face total chaos” without increased funding and support for the operation of the Kenya-led multinational force helping Haiti’s police to tackle the gangs’ expanding violence into areas beyond the capital, Port-Au-Prince. Most recently, gangs seized the city of Mirebalais in central Haiti, and during the attack more than 500 prisoners were freed, she said.
RSS