NSW, Vic cases add to travel hot spots

TWELVE new locations have been deemed high risk for people travelling to and from Tasmania after New South Wales recorded a community COVID-19 case as three further hot spots declared in Victoria.

In the first community case for NSW in three weeks, a returned overseas traveller tested positive to COVID-19 after being released from hotel quarantine and visiting several locations in Sydney and on the NSW south coast.

The person from the Wollongong area returned two negative tests during quarantine.

Three Victorian locations in Melbourne’s western and northwestern suburbs (at four separate times) have now been declared high risk by the Tasmanian Director of Public Health after an authorised officer at the Holiday Inn at Melbourne Airport tested positive for COVID-19 late on Sunday,

The woman in her 50s had tested negative on February 3 and 4 but, after two days off, returned to work on Sunday and was symptomatic an hour after finishing her shift.

She then returned a positive test, prompting the government to stand down 80 quarantine workers for testing along with nine police officers and 12 Defence Force members.

Another 17 people are social and household contacts.

Authorities said it was not clear how the worker had been infected and genomic testing had begun.

Tasmanian health authorities are monitoring the NSW and Victorian cases.

“Contact tracing of the NSW case by the NSW government has identified 12 locations, 11 in the Wollongong area and one in Brighton Le Sands in Sydney, visited by the person while he may have been infectious,” Tasmania’s director of public health Mark Veitch said.

“These locations have now been declared high risk by the Tasmanian Director of Public Health.”

Authorities are urging anyone now in Tasmania who was in NSW on or after February 2 to check the list of high risk locations at www.coronavirus.tas.gov.au/travelalert.

Meanwhile, free travel between Western Australia and Tasmania has been reinstated, after restrictions were put in place due to the Perth COVID-19 scare on January 31. The person was infected with a more transmissible strain of coronavirus and had moved in the Perth community while potentially infectious, and three regions were designated as high-risk by the Tasmanian Director of Public Health.

Extensive contact tracing and testing in Perth has so far not identified further cases among contacts of the case or people at locations visited by the case.

As of 6pm Monday Public Health removed the high risk classification that had been imposed on areas of Perth.