Australian Reports of the Virus Spread

[jakeseven7]

Anyway the good news is that it is just a normal cluster and one would expect that the two rings of contacts measures outside of any cases will see it cease in a relatively quick timeframe as this has worked well since it has been practiced.

Pizza guy joins the list of Australia's CV19 rogues, and the 24 hour rapid infection period initially claimed by SA Health to be occurring has not been (just normal rapid transmission that you get in large family households).

Yes stripping out all the embarrassment and anger the actual underlying news is great news for SA and all families looking to reunite for Xmas.

VIC has proved 3 times in a row and recently that this approach works so we can positively expect the same for SA.

 

[Pushka]

Yes stripping out all the embarrassment and anger the actual underlying news is great news for SA and all families looking to reunite for Xmas.

VIC has proved 3 times in a row and recently that this approach works so we can positively expect the same for SA.

Indeed. But I can only say that because we weren't personally or financially impacted apart from my nephew who might not get here for Christmas now. But my immediate thought was that MrP could return to the gym (Yep, it gives us both a lot of benefit ) and that Christmas is back on again.

 

[Carrots]

The assumption would be a cash in hand job and/or breaking visa rules.

The police may not have any powers, but the ATO and Immigration do.

At this stage, the lynch mob haven't burned the place down....

 

[Pushka]

The assumption would be a cash in hand job and/or breaking visa rules.

The police may not have any powers, but the ATO and Immigration do.

At this stage, the lynch mob haven't burned the place down....

Likely both. I see that caption is that people have sympathy for the business owners but they must have been involved with the lie.

 

[nutwood]

Other victims of the SA situation were the approx 900 visitors to Tas from SA who got ordered into quarantine here. So much for their holidays Not forgetting the SA walkers on a wilderness track who got helicoptered out to go into quarantine!

No news yet on what the Tas govt will do now about this.

Is this the fault of SA or a possibly too heavy handed response from Tasmania? It's a thorny question I know, but might it have been sensible to ascertain whether any of the visitors were likely to have come into contact with Adelaide's very small cluster? The wilderness walk people were in a closed system. Fairly easy to contact trace them, why interrupt their walk?

 

[jase05]

The assumption would be a cash in hand job and/or breaking visa rules.

The police may not have any powers, but the ATO and Immigration do.

At this stage, the lynch mob haven't burned the place down....

Worker and owner have been named and shamed on social media.
Lucky Bunnings reopened today, pitchfork sales will be through the roof

 

[lovetravellingoz]

Well not that hotel quarantine ceased in Vic, but international arrivals will be using it again from Dec 7.

 

[RooFlyer]

Is this the fault of SA or a possibly too heavy handed response from Tasmania? It's a thorny question I know, but might it have been sensible to ascertain whether any of the visitors were likely to have come into contact with Adelaide's very small cluster? The wilderness walk people were in a closed system. Fairly easy to contact trace them, why interrupt their walk?

I think it was an over reaction by the Tasmanians, especially in the light of the comment by the Tas CHO when they lifted the borders a few weeks ago, that if there are future outbreaks interstate ( certainly will be) then obviously manifested there and unlikely to get to Tas before dealt with at the source. The airlifting out of the bush walkers was ridiculous.

The only slack I would cut them would be if they were also acting under the impression that the SA outbreak was of a particularly virulent strain. They might have been, but again, nothing disclosed here.

Mid afternoon and I haven’t seen any reports of the Tas govt lifting quarantine of the SA visitors ( from fallible memory, it was applied to all arrivals who arrived 4-7 days prior to the outbreak announcement)

 

[Pushka]

Conflicting advice here. Originally we were advised that testing had shown the virus was the rapidly spreading one and that we were on the fifth generation. Now the Liar exposure means it is only on the second generation and the contacts and second degree contacts have been isolated. More positives will come but expected only from the current suspects. One of the 80 year olds has been released from hospital and just one there now.

 

[HappyFlyerFamily]

Nsw mystery case watch

Today’s reports indicate:
- 0 in the past 7 days
- 1 in the period 8-14 days
- 1 in the period 15-28 days
- 32 older than 28 days but since before Crossroads emerged.

Another -1 on a case over 28 days apparently occurred yesterday (Friday). Otherwise natural aging of cases

Nsw mystery case watch

Today’s reports indicate:
- 0 in the past 7 days
- 0 in the period 8-14 days
- 1 in the period 15-28 days
- 33 older than 28 days but since before Crossroads emerged.

As at Day 13 (NSW)/Day 16 (Sydney)

PS 6 days and 28 pages since last update.

 

[jase05]

Traffic has increased around the place and heaps of people at the beach

 

[lovetravellingoz]

"We were operating on a premise that this person had simply gone to a pizza shop, [with] very short exposure and walked away having contracted the virus," said Mr Stevens.

Transmission from brief encounters is not unknown. With the Butcher Club Cluster in Victoria at least 4 customers became infected. The customers and the butchers would have been wearing masks and supposedly maintaining 1.5m. As they were only buying meat you would imagine that their interactions would have been reasonably brief. The truck driver linked to this cluster also had short contacts that caused transmission.

I still do not see why this engendered such severe measures. It seems to have been off the back of a number of misjudgements and wrong assumptions.

Was this the first time that a large family has been involved in a SA cluster? It would seem that the quite common rapid transmission within a large family caused undue alarm based on what Spurrier said at today's SA Presser.

 

[Pushka]

as this the first time that a large family has been involved in a SA cluster? It would seem that the quite common rapid transmission within a large family caused undue alarm based on what Spurrier said at today's SA Presser.

On this scale yes. We did have family groups involved in the Qantas Baggage handlers group (maybe up to five family members), and the Barossa Valley group. And then a community cluster with the Thebarton group but nothing like the 15? in one family.

Post automatically merged: Nov 20, 2020

Traffic has increased around the place and heaps of people at the beach

Look out for tomorrow @36C.. It's really windy down here but people started walking and jogging almost mid conference.

 

[RooFlyer]

Transmission from brief encounters is not unknown. With the Butcher Club Cluster in Victoria at least 4 customers became infected. The customers and the butchers would have been wearing masks and supposedly maintaining 1.5m. As they were only buying meat you would imagine that their interactions would have been reasonably brief. The truck driver linked to this cluster also had short contacts that caused transmission.

I still do not see why this engendered such severe measures. It seems to have been off the back of a number of misjudgements and wrong assumptions.

Whilst short encounter transmissions were not unknown, if the SA authorities were acting under the impression ( rightly or wrongly) that the virus was a more virulent, mutated strain, and therefore a step into the unknown, then, as I posted above re the Tasmanian actions, I can cut them some slack, especially if they were at the same time thinking “are we having another Victoria?”. Leaving it a few days would have been too late if their pessimistic view was correct and then we’d all be out for blood.

That’s not to say that there were no mistakes, but they are dealing with pretty high stakes.

 

[RAM]

The media, politicians & public MUST make sure of not losing sight of the wood for the trees. While I'm on a roll let's look for the silver lining before normal transmission is resumed.

• Patient Zero came from a quarantine hotel not in a CV facing role. The outbreak happened, just not with the worst case it first appeared as (so far!).
• It was not detected for an extended period - revealed no regular mandatory testing regime ANYWHERE in Australia.
• Multiple workers from SA quarantine hotels have a second job - revealed State authorities (not just in SA) still have not learned from NSW & Vic outbreaks.
• If not for a (unnamed) extremely conscientious doctor this could have spread much wider before the first symptomatic case occured. If reports are to be believed the ratio of asymptomatic to symptomatic cases for this outbreak is 9:1. What else failed in the monitoring system?
• SA went into overdrive trying to track down all possible contacts from an event that dated back around 10 days & clearly their plans were found wanting for the first 5 days.
• Insufficient pre-planning for testing centres to cope with reasonably expected number of people presenting - but by day 7 seemed to get on track. Who failed to make these plans in the previous 8-9 months? What else remains lacking?
• People lie (one of the best lines IMHO in the series "House") - perhaps this will go down as the Australian non-Politican record! Revealed that SA's preparation is woefully flawed with zero penalty for lying to contract tracers, not even a $10 fine can be levied.
• Suggests that the contact tracing questions template for businesses may be deficient - Q1: List all employees, their contact details & when they worked over the preceeding 2 weeks.
• Someone involved who had their doubts about the liar should be made South Australian of the Year!

Imagine, however, that the person did not lie. That they had contracted CV from handling a pizza box for their takeaway order, & they worked in the Stamford Hotel for an extended period after infected vs actually also a worker at the pizza shop.

A typical pizza shop will sell between 300 to 500 pizzas per night. As the CV had been around for at least 5 nights by then potentially their could be say 4,000 households that could have been infected. How many different schools would that have covered? How many different businesses?

At 30 contacts per person & 3 people per household = 360,000 people to interview. That's just the 1st round & btw = 20% of SA's entire population due to the pizza shop.

If faced with those figures as the best available information - I would lock down the state. How many of those people work in aged care - you can see the nightmare scenario. Given how the entire country watched the Melbourne outbreak gain momentum - I'd opt to try and prevent hundreds of deaths.

As all of Europe is showing - under-react and people pay with their lives, over-react you're wrong unfortunately people suffer monetary losses. So far globally there's been far too few over-reactions.

Some of the questions the journalists were asking makes me wonder where they got their degrees

In the cornflakes box!

but they were asking the same questions again and again - Stevens clearly said there is no provision for penalties under the Emergency Management act to charge the guy who lied with anything.

Remember they all want their voice heard or video shown on their respective media channels, not the competition's. Self-interest rears its ugly head yet again.

And yes there was a possibility the lie was true. However the question remains as to why the interview from this person was so persuasive that SA used such draconian measures, as nothing else to date suggests that such measures were warranted.

Potentially 20% of SA population exposed within 1 generation from pizza shop contamination if TRUE that infection came from pizza box collection.

Is this the fault of SA or a possibly too heavy handed response from Tasmania? It's a thorny question I know, but might it have been sensible to ascertain whether any of the visitors were likely to have come into contact with Adelaide's very small cluster? The wilderness walk people were in a closed system. Fairly easy to contact trace them, why interrupt their walk?

After NorthWest cluster - it is a case of 'Bang, stop or I'll shoot'.
If the info had been correct then potentially everyone the walkers met risked infection. Much cheaper to fly the helicopter to get them vs shutting down Tasmania. Imagine you were the walkers coming the other way & your State Govt risked you catching CV instead of spending $1,400 to use a helicopter?

 

[Pushka]

Imagine, however, that the person did not lie. That they had contracted CV from handling a pizza box for their takeaway order, & they worked in the Stamford Hotel for an extended period after infected vs the were actually also a worker at the pizza shop.

Isnt such transmission incredibly rare and maybe has never been reported before? Maybe that may have raised a flag of doubt before taking such drastic action? And now, I am rethinking how the virus escaped the medi hotel in the first place. A door knob or something else? Which door knob unless it was inside a room. In which case, it could have been any surface. Why specify a door knob. And we know both a cleaner and security guy became positive. Surely they didn't touch the same door knob? And the people in quarantine weren't allowed out so they wouldn't have touched anything outside the room.

 

[Seat0B]

The people on the Ghan who were turned back at the border into NT. My nephew who now may not be able to get back from France to be with his young kids at Christmas when his flight into Adelaide got cancelled and no more spaces.

I agree. Just so sad for everyone, your relatives, the business owners, the people with cancelled weddings and funerals, holidays ruined, extra unexpected costs for quarantine.... the list goes on and on.

 

[Lynda2475]

I am rethinking how the virus escaped the medi hotel in the first place.

Quite possible patient 0 also lied about where they had been in the hotel and who they inetracted with? Maybe illegal visit to someone quarantining, or maybe they were emptying bins with tissues etc accidently touched the droplets and then accidently touched face without washing hands properly. They would have had to directly touch something that the returned traveller was able to leave droplets on.

 

[nutwood]

After NorthWest cluster - it is a case of 'Bang, stop or I'll shoot'.
If the info had been correct then potentially everyone the walkers met risked infection. Much cheaper to fly the helicopter to get them vs shutting down Tasmania. Imagine you were the walkers coming the other way & your State Govt risked you catching CV instead of spending $1,400 to use a helicopter?

I think a little bit of proportion is needed here. Everyone the walkers met risked infection, if the walkers had contracted the virus before leaving Adelaide and were asymptomatic.
I suspect if you did the sums, the risk of the helicopter crashing would be more probable.

 

[jase05]

Quite possible patient 0 also lied about where they had been in the hotel and who they inetracted with? Maybe illegal visit to someone quarantining, or maybe they were emptying bins with tissues etc accidently touched the droplets and then accidently touched face without washing hands properly. They woudl have had to directly touch something that the returned traveller was able to leave droplets on.

Pretty sure both Marshall and Spurrier have said that they had a team go over the footage from CCTV of the hotel once the genomic results came back. The results were able to pinpoint a male traveller from the UK as the original carrier and from there they reviewed footage to establish where the breach occurred