Victoria on alert after NSW COVID-19 case

By | March 15, 2021

A security guard who worked at two quarantine hotels in inner Sydney tested positive for the virus on Saturday, despite having received his first dose of the Pfizer vaccine.

A number of venues across the city have been listed as potential exposure sites and 130 close contacts have been asked to self-isolate.

The Pancakes on the Rocks in Beverley Hills has been listed as a high-risk exposure site on Saturday between 10.45am and 12pm, with anyone who visited during the period required to get tested and then immediately quarantine for 14 days.

The Victorian Health Department said anyone now in the state who visited the diner will still need to quarantine for 14 days.

In an alert issued late on Sunday night, the department said it will be contacting all arrivals to Victoria from Sydney since March 13, using data captured by its travel permit system.

It warned areas of NSW may be “re-designated as red or orange zones by Victoria’s chief health officer as further information emerges”.

It comes as Victoria recorded a 17th consecutive day with no locally acquired coronavirus cases, following 9696 tests.

Most of the state’s quarantine hotels remain non-operational after international flights were suspended on February 13, when a hotel quarantine worker contracted the highly infectious UK strain of the virus from returned travellers at the Holiday Inn at Melbourne Airport.

The outbreak triggered the state’s five-day, circuit-breaker lockdown.

More than 30,000 vaccine doses have been administered in Victoria since the rollout three weeks ago.

Authorities in NSW said the Pfizer jab does not provide protection against COVID-19 for at least 12 days after a person was injected. The man received his first jab on March 2.

Australian Associated Press

Western Advocate – Health