“Environmental swabbing of the hotel has been completed and this is literally where swabs are taken of the service area where staff work, the walls, materials in the hotel,” she said.
“Interviews have taken place of three of the six infected people and this isn’t straightforward, as you can appreciate, some of these people are sick in hospitals, their health and wellbeing must obviously be considered in context of the overall investigation.”
MS Carroll said police would also be investigating “policies, procedures, protocols and training in terms of what occurred in that hotel.”
Recommendations “relevant to the entire hotel quarantine program” will then be released.
Ms Carroll has also responded to a disputed News Corp report that a father and daughter who later tested positive to the UK COVID-19 strain, may have breached hotel quarantine.
The Courier Mail suggested in a report on Thursday evening that the daughter caught a ride-share back to the quarantine hotel from the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital after travelling there with her father who was unwell.
“Yesterday there was an issue raised that a father and a daughter – there may have been a potential breach of quarantine on the 11th of January and this was reported extensively,” Ms Carroll says.
“I can tell you, from extensive independent inquiries, the daughter was wearing full PPE [personal protective equipment at all times.
“She was transported by QAS [Queensland Ambulance Service], not a taxi or Uber, from the hospital back to the [quarantine] hotel and was then escorted by two police officers back to her room.
“Please, if you hear anything about that, just make sure that we do get the right story out there.
“I got the brief, because the father in terms of his English fluency, was best to have the daughter travel with him. That was determined by [Queensland] Health.”
