All rooms at Brisbane hotel to be tested in breach investigation

“That’s part of the consideration of what’s happening at the moment, to try to work out if there’s any more information we can get,” Dr Young said.

The cluster was sparked when a man arrived in Brisbane from the UK on December 30, unknowingly already carrying the more virulent B.1.1.7 strain of COVID-19 that has been circulating there.

The man’s partner was also infected, but they were staying in the same room, so authorities are confident of the transmission link in that case.

However, four other cases – a hotel cleaner and her partner, and a man and a woman from Lebanon in a different room on the seventh floor – do not have clear lines of transmission.

Speculation has swirled this week about whether the hospital’s airconditioning system might have spread the more virulent strain to other rooms, or whether the hotel’s elevators might be a vector.

Dr Young said there were a number of facts that had already been established, including that the man and the cleaner were never in the same room.

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“We know as a fact that the man from the UK left that room on the third of January … when he was taken to hospital,” she said.

“And we know as another fact that the cleaner only worked on the second [of January]. So there is no way that the cleaner has gone into that room after the gentleman left.

“I am very, very certain that the cleaner was only there on the second, and the man was still in the room on the second, so the cleaner did not go into that room on the second.”

Deputy Police Commissioner Steve Gollschewski said investigators would continue to go through CCTV of the hotel over the relevant four days to establish the processes that were in place at the hotel when the transmission is thought to have occurred.

“The main focus for the investigation is everything to do with the Grand Chancellor – its environment, how it operates, the processes that people used, what occurred,” he said.

“So we’re going to look at what should have happened, what did happen, and what more we can learn around what’s happening. So nothing is off the table.”