The risk of COVID escaping from hotel quarantine or a health-care setting will never be zero. But in NSW and Queensland, was everything possible done to minimise the risk?
Canadian government travel restrictions are an attempt to curb the spread of COVID-19 variants. But vague language around exemptions for medical travel may confuse the physicians who can grant them.
Our buildings and cities were not designed to handle a pandemic. But countries around the world are coming up with design ideas, some high-tech and some more basic, to reduce the infection risks.
Another lockdown in Victoria comes at a considerable cost. However, it’s important to see the distinction between this short, sharp lockdown and the one that lasted several months last year.
From February 15, people travelling to the UK from a country on the UK’s travel-ban list will be required to quarantine in a government-approved hotel for ten days.
Investigations are continuing into the case of a returned traveller in NSW who tested positive to COVID two days after leaving hotel quarantine. Could they have had an abnormally long incubation period?
In contrast to other states after a positive case in a hotel quarantine worker, Victoria isn’t locking down. But the response is sensible and proportionate – we’re well positioned to manage this outbreak.
With no national standard, casually employed staff, a lack of PPE and a refusal to account for aerosol transmission, infections such as the one that prompted Perth’s lockdown will keep happening.
Nobody likes a whinger. But when you’re used to having an entourage, and being feted around the world, things can get tough when you don’t get your own way.
The clever strategy by Premier Daniel Andrews to defer analysis of the failed hotel quarantine program until the virus had been suppressed makes the findings largely academic and historical.
Australia has student accommodation with nearly 100,000 beds, many now empty. The large purpose-built student housing facilities are well suited for quarantining returning international students.
Victoria has achieved a remarkable thing. But the virus has not been eradicated. The question then becomes, how well can the state deal with new outbreaks?
South Australia’s COVID cluster is disappointing after a long stretch of no community transmission. Now we need to act to stop it growing exponentially.
Justice Jennifer Coate’s first report into the bungled hotel quarantine in Victoria maps out how processes can be changed to make sure it never happens again.
After a disastrous week in which Mikakos’ evidence to the hotel quarantine inquiry came into question, she has resigned her position and says she will also quit parliament.
Professor and Canada Research Chair in Global Health Governance; Scientific Director, Pacific Institute on Pathogens, Pandemics and Society, Simon Fraser University
Professor of Epidemiology, Population Interventions Unit, Centre for Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne