Holiday Inn Melbourne Airport, Saelesian College, St Anne’s Primary School close after COVID-19 cases

The two latest cases at the Holiday Inn are a returned traveller, who tested positive to the virus after finishing her 14-day quarantine period, and a worker.

Guests started being moved out of the hotel on Tuesday night.

A source in the hotel program, who is not authorised to speak publicly about the matter, said the hotel would be closed for at least a week as the ventilation system in the hotel is reviewed.

The state government suspects airborne transmission of the virus has occurred inside the hotel.

The government has been preparing to open two additional quarantine hotels in recent weeks as Victoria is set to take hundreds more international arrivals this month. Capacity in these new hotels could make up for the lost capacity caused by the closure of the Holiday Inn.

Callers to radio station 3AW described seeing guests at the Holiday Inn being escorted out of the hotel on Wednesday morning.

A caller identified as Mario said there were a number of Skybuses and police vehicles with flashing lights outside the hotel just before 9am.

“It’s all taped off and there’s about five medical workers standing out the front within distance so looks like it’s pretty much shut up,” he said.

Another caller, David, said he saw guests leaving the building one by one. “[They’re] walking them out one by one with the police obviously around and the medical workers escorting them out to the bus, so they’re definitely unloading the hotel,” he said.

Brisbane’s Hotel Grand Chancellor, which operated as a quarantine facility, was evacuated in mid-January after a casual cleaner tested positive for the highly infectious UK strain. Six cases were linked to a cluster traced to the seventh floor of the hotel.

All guests at the Grand Chancellor were evacuated individually in ambulances to another quarantine hotel and where they were required to restart their 14-day quarantine period.

“We moved each room in their own ambulance. We didn’t mix people. That’s why it took so long,” Queensland Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young said at the time.

Three cases have now emerged at the Holiday Inn in less than a week, while five have been detected in less than a fortnight across three Victorian quarantine hotels. Three are confirmed to be the more infectious British variant of COVID-19.

It prompted calls from Victoria’s peak medical group to close the Holiday Inn as a quarantine hotel.

Australian Medical Association President Julian Rait has also called for the state government to release the results of an audit of the ventilation system in the hotel before it started housing high-risk returned travellers.

Professor Rait said serious questions remained about whether an adequate examination of the facility was undertaken before the COVID-19 outbreak emerged this week.

“I’d like to see the original audit to demonstrate if it was safe to use in the first place,” Professor Rait said. “We need to see if they have done this, and if not, we need to asking why not?

“There have been three cases on one floor. One case is unfortunate, but two or three cases is careless.”

The Health Department updated its list of exposure sites late on Tuesday night with seven venues in Sunbury, including Cellarbrations and several stores in the Sunbury Square Shopping Centre.

Anyone at those venues at the specified times must get tested and isolate for 14 days, regardless of their test result.

In a late Tuesday afternoon press conference, Victoria’s Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton said it was likely that the two new cases at the Holiday Inn were a result of transmission inside the hotel as they were on the same floor.

He flagged the government may move to close the hotel altogether.

“At the moment [the investigation] is absolutely focused on that floor and all the individuals who have been on that floor – staff or residents – are going to be in quarantine and will go through the testing process,” Professor Sutton said.

“If there is any indication that the risk extends beyond that floor, then it is an option for us to close the hotel need be.”

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Doctor floats caravan parks as an alternative to hotels

Dr Michelle Ananda-Rajah, an infectious diseases physician at Monash University said it was crucial to understand whether the latest cases in quarantine were instances of a “slow-burning” virus with long incubation periods, or whether people were actually catching the virus in the hotels.

“We’ve known for a long time, that COVID can be spread through fine aerosols, which basically accumulate in the air, remain suspended for hours,” she told Melbourne radio station 3AW on Wednesday morning.

“The issue though is that we haven’t really seen this addressed in any meaningful way by any level of government.

“It’s been discussed and floated people have talked about it and then danced around it but there really hasn’t been any meaningful interventions put in place to mitigate this risk.”

Dr Ananda-Rajah said she was opposed to extending the period of quarantine for overseas arrivals if it was found that new strains of the virus had longer incubation periods.

“If you go to Hong Kong, you have to quarantine for 21 days. And that’s been in place for quite some time there now there. [But] there are real humanitarian issues at play here as well,” she said.

“I don’t like the idea of putting people into hotel quarantine I think that no, there’s a real dark underbelly to all of this, which is the mental health effects on confining people in closed spaces with no access to fresh air.“

The doctor said she had even been mulling on the novelty idea of housing quarantine cases at caravan parks, instead of hotels.

“I’ve been thinking to myself whether caravan parks might work. At least people would then get access to fresh air,” she said.

Berejiklian says Andrews “pretty good at spin”

Meanwhile, interstate tensions over standards in hotel quarantine have resurfaced.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian took a swipe at Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews after he claimed Victoria had “higher standards” in quarantine hotels than NSW on Tuesday.

“I can foreshadow for you that we’re not going to anywhere near the capacity NSW has, we will have less capacity because we have a different model and I believe higher standards,” Mr Andrews said on Tuesday.

Speaking to Sydney radio station 2GB on Wednesday morning, Ms Berejiklian said her Victorian counterpart was “pretty good at spin”.

“He’s pretty good at spin and that’s all I’ll say. I think the people of NSW don’t want me to lower myself to those sorts of statements.”

The NSW Premier said she believed the success of a state’s hotel quarantine system should be measured by how many Australians have been returned home while keeping the community safe.

“All I know is that NSW has welcomed more than half the Aussies coming back home: when other states were in lockdown or refused to take people or weren’t able, we’ve done that on behalf of the states,” she said, adding that she did not believe any state’s system was perfect.

“Is the system in NSW perfect? No. And I would never boast about it.”