Hotel guards in Melbourne have been hooking up with returned travellers while they were supposed to be quarantining, according to saucy new allegations which confirm what everyone else was already thinking.
On Tuesday, Premier Daniel Andrews said he couldn’t confirm whether or not there had been “contact with guests of an intimate nature”. However today, anonymous insiders have told the Herald Sun exactly what went down, and includes a cheeky root or two.
Aside from the “intimate” contact, the newspaper also reported that staff were given very little infection control training, and that guards shared elevators and shook hands – little things which, you know, the general population has been told not to do for months now.
On top of that, there are also allegations that the government paid for shifts which weren’t even worked, leading to a serious understaffing problem among hotel security. Some families have also been allowed to move between rooms, including one family which wanted to play cards.
“Operators are cowboys,” one insider told the newspaper.
Another security guard, known only as George, described his experience as “horrendous” to the Today Show on Thursday morning.
EXCLUSIVE: A security guard working in a quarantine hotel in Melbourne has blown the whistle on what working there is really like. #9Today pic.twitter.com/ZrkC0pTBSq
— The Today Show (@TheTodayShow) July 1, 2020
He said staff were only given “five minutes” of hygiene training, and were given a single mask and pair of gloves to last the whole shift.
A judicial enquiry has now been launched to find out what exactly has gone wrong with Victoria’s handing of hotel quarantine.
Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt has already come out swinging, telling Sky News this morning that what went down in the hotels “was an unacceptable set of breaches.”
“We would encourage the Victoria authorities to throw the book at them, either individuals or, if there’s any systemic inappropriate action, at those that are responsible for it,” he said.
While the allegations would constitute a serious breach of virus control standard, we do not yet know whether those involved reckon hooking up in a quarantine hotel was worth the risk.
On behalf of the rest of the country: it wasn’t.
