Originally Posted by
jrfsp
However, how many further escapes from HQ will we have this year??? How much do these lockdowns costs? Where is Socmo?
This is what epidemiologists were saying in November last year, since then we’ve had 2 more hotel outbreaks and nothing has been changed:
South Australian cluster shows we need to stop hotel quarantine in cities: epidemiologist
Infectious diseases expert and epidemiologist Mary-Louise McLaws told Virginia Trioli the Adelaide cluster shows why hotel quarantine programs should be shut down in favour of purpose built quarantine stations.
"Hotel quarantines were a great idea to get Australians and residents back home, but it should only have been an interim idea," Professor McLaws said.
"We do need to start thinking about a purpose built environment."
South Australia’s COVID outbreak - Adrian Esterman Professor of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, University of South Australia
In a situation like this, we should ask why we continue to operate high-risk quarantine hotels in the middle of a city. It would be much safer to quarantine people away from communities, like we did on Christmas Island earlier in the pandemic.
This will not be the last hotel outbreak before a critical level of vaccination is reached.