Australia suffers its own ‘Pizzagate’

Pizza chef lies to contract tracers, causes lockdown

ADELAIDE, Australia

• It began with a lie about a pizza bar. And it led to the lockdown of an entire state.

Fearing a super strain of the coronavirus, officials in Australia’s fifth- largest city earlier this week ordered an extreme six-day shutdown of South Australia state — they even banned outdoor exercise and dog-walking — after detecting a cluster of cases apparently linked to a pizza shop in an Adelaide suburb.

The severe response was based on the account of a kitchenhand at a quarantine hotel, who told health workers he became infected after collecting a takeout meal from the restaurant, Woodville Pizza Bar, which was being investigated as a possible virus hot spot.

But on Friday, authorities dramatically reversed course after determining in a followup interview that the man had lied to contact tracers. The man was not a patron but a pizza chef employed at the restaurant, alongside a security guard who had contracted the virus while working at a second quarantine hotel. Suddenly, the outbreak’s transmission chain was clearer.

“We were operating on a premise that this person had simply gone to a pizza shop — very short exposure — and walked away having contracted the virus,” said Grant Stevens, the state’s police commissioner and emergency coordinator. “We now know they are a very close contact of another person who has been confirmed as being positive with COVID. It has changed the dynamic substantially.”

“Ha d this person been truthful to the contact-tracing teams, we would not have gone into a six- day lockdown,” Stevens added.

Steven Marshall, the premier of South Australia, expressed his anger over the episode as he announced the lockdown — which affected 1.8 million people — would be lifted on Saturday.

“To say that I’m fuming is an understatement, we’re absolutely livid about the actions of this individual,” he told reporters.

The fiasco, and the reversal of the lockdown barely 36 hours after it began, prompted embarrassment and ridicule across Australia. Some people began tweeting under the # Pizzagate hashtag, reviving memories of a debunked conspiracy theory that emerged during the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign, centred on Comet Ping Pong pizza bar in northwest Washington.

For others, including businesses affected by the lockdown, it was no laughing matter.

Guests at Peppers Hotel, the quarantine facility where the latest outbreak emerged, have been forced to restart their 14- day isolation periods, a requirement for all Australians returning from overseas.

For Sam Krukeyemer, 30, that means 28 consecutive days stuck in a hotel room.