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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-06-08 Daily Xml
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COVID-19 Hotel Quarantine

Mr PICTON (Kaurna) (15:02): My question is to the Premier. Who has conducted engineering and ventilation studies into all the SA medi-hotels and will the government make their reports publicly available?

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (15:02): I don't have information which looks at that matter specifically at my fingertips, but I can update the house that this is one of the critical areas that we looked at after the Parafield cluster developed at the Playford Hotel. For the very first time, I think we became acutely aware of the possibility for airborne transmission. This was, of course, very concerning. We took action immediately to look at the pressure in the rooms and whether it was positive pressure, or indeed negative pressure, so that when the doors opened in the room the air wasn't rushing out, potentially with those airborne particles, but in fact was coming in.

Beyond that, we also looked at significantly reducing the number of times that that door was opened. I know, because I discussed it at the time with Professor Nicola Spurrier, that there were some changes made to the configuration at Tom's Court Hotel—this is a dedicated hotel. You might recall that we decided, in response to the Parafield cluster, we would isolate those who were COVID positive. Initially, we did that I think on some dedicated floors within the Pullman complex. We did this in advance of being able to transfer people over to the Tom's Court Hotel.

For quite some weeks, we looked at what the alternatives were, whether it would be standing up the Wakefield hospital, whether it would be like in Queensland, where people are transferred into their major teaching hospital, or whether it be Tom's Court. There were probably a number of others, but I can't recall what they were at the moment. The group that was looking at it was quite convinced that the Tom's Court Hotel provided the optimal response to the changed scenario with regard to COVID.

A big part of that decision was the better airflow management, the ability for us to also space out people who were COVID-19 positive within that facility and, if you like, develop a much higher level response: fewer times that doors were opened, dedicated personnel from SAPOL, protective services, SA Health doing all the work and a completely different testing regime that existed at that hotel.

So the member is right: airflow is absolutely crucial. Again, we didn't know this a year ago. There will probably be other things that we learn about the transmission of this disease going forward, both lessons that we learn here in South Australia and lessons that we can pick up from working and collaborating with those people interstate and, indeed, overseas.

The AHPPC at the moment is meeting extraordinarily regularly, sometimes several times per day in the last couple of weeks, to look at information particularly with regard to new infections from Victoria. I've got to say, we are very fortunate in Australia to have this mechanism to share ideas, share best practice and make sure that we can keep South Australia and the broader country protected.

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