Forty hours of community service for woman’s COVID breach

A WOMAN who lied about being in a COVID-19 hotspot when she returned to Queensland unknowingly infected with the virus has only been sentenced to 40 hours community service – despite a magistrate slamming her actions as “selfish”, “self-indulgent” and “extremely careless”.

Olivia Muranga, 20, lied on her border declaration pass when returning from coronavirus-riddled Melbourne last year, claiming she had not been in a COVID hotspot.

While unknowingly infected with the virus, Muranga attended her work as a cleaner at a school and visited restaurants which Police Prosecutor Lisa Pye said had a “knock on” effect, causing the school and businesses to be closed.

Magistrate Sue Ganasan said while Muranga’s actions had been “selfish”, she had also subsequently been the victim of a “concerted and distasteful” campaign which “invited public vitriol and incited racial vilification”.

Muranga yesterday pleaded guilty in the Brisbane Magistrates Court to a charge of failing to comply with a COVID health direction after charges of fraud and providing false or misleading documents were dropped. The court heard earlier reports that Muranga had not assisted police and contact tracers were incorrect and Sgt

Pye said the young woman had “co-operated with police to facilitate the investigation into the Logan cluster”.

The prosecutor said there was a 47 per cent increase in COVID testing overnight as a result of the investigation, with 8500 tests conducted in 24 hours at a cost of more than $333,000.

However defence lawyer Dominic Brunello said it was an agreed fact between the defence and prosecution that

“at the time she committed the offence the nature and extent of the testing that followed associated with the Logan cluster was not reasonably foreseeable”.

Mr Brunello said Muranga had been “candid”, “fulsome” and “co-operative” with authorities and had suffered great harm to her mental health, having since been diagnosed with depression and anxiety in response to the incident and the consequent scrutiny from the public and media.

He said Muranga had been studying paramedicine and working part time as a cleaner at the time she committed the offences but she had since been sacked from her job and dropped out of school.

Magistrate Ganasan took into account the significant extracurial punishment Muranga had faced by way of public and media attention and scrutiny, the loss of her job and the impacts to her mental health.