The man who arrived from America had permission to travel to Melbourne under the exemption scheme to see a family member in palliative care. He had received a negative test at Sydney airport before flying to Tullamarine, but still should have gone directly into hotel quarantine, which was at the time taking travellers with exemptions and Melbourne people unable to quarantine at home.
However, he was not greeted at the airport by a government official and taken to a hotel. A state government spokeswoman has confirmed that officials did not have his flight details, so they were unaware of his arrival.
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The Victorian Health Department failed to adequately support testing and enforce self-isolation rules during two regional COVID-19 outbreaks that were suppressed largely through the strong actions of locals.
A leaked state government review found clear lines of communication did not exist in the management of outbreaks in Colac, west of Geelong, where about 145 people become infected in two clusters between July and September.
The Australian Lamb Company in Colac became the nexus of regional Victoria s biggest coronavirus cluster.
Credit:Jason South
Abattoir workers received health directions in a language they could not understand and were leaving home during their quarantine period. Some workers, who lived in houses with up to 11 co-workers, were short on food and other essentials because emergency relief was not delivered quickly.
Coronavirus Victoria: Victoria s contact tracing system was crisis built inquiry finds smh.com.au - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from smh.com.au Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg were publicly campaigning for one. Restaurant and cafe owners were desperate, as were people who’d been cut off from friends and family for two months.
Thompson was a member of a Melbourne University research team, led by epidemiologist Tony Blakely, asked to provide scientific modelling to help inform the government’s exit strategy. The modelling didn’t tell the government what it should do but provided a series of projections about the risk of a further epidemic before Christmas.
The most important variable in the modelling – essentially a political one – was how far the government was willing to push case numbers down before it allowed things to reopen. Although Andrews didn’t say it out loud at his press conference, it was clear to Thompson as he drove from his Castlemaine home to Bendigo that the government had decided to go all-in; it planned to eliminate the virus.