Victoria’s top quarantine officer asked to show compassion for the corona-infected asthmatic suspected of being the source of an outbreak at a Holiday Inn hotel that led to a strict five-day lockdown in the Australian state.
“Nobody ever wanted this to happen and I’m sorry this played out the way it is,” Emma Cassar, the commissioner of Covid-19 Quarantine Victoria (CQV), said Saturday. “It’s awful. We’ve never accused him of doing the wrong thing, he hasn’t done the wrong thing.”
She was referring to a 38-year-old man from Victoria who was widely blamed last week for an outbreak of the highly contagious ‘British’ strain Covid-19. Government authorities on Friday announced a surprise ‘circuit-breaker’ lockdown in an effort to prevent the virus from circulating to the general public. The order to stay home for five days was met with complaints from anti-lockdown activists and caused panic when buying essential goods such as toilet paper.
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The man, who is currently being cared for in an intensive care unit, said he was vilified for accidentally triggering the outbreak during his quarantine at the Holiday Inn near Melbourne Airport after returning from Europe. The spread of the virus has been attributed to a nebulizer, a medical device that breaks a drug into a fine mist that can be inhaled by a patient and used to treat his asthma.
“If I had been told I couldn’t use it I never would have used it,” he told The Age. “The way it all got into the news and made it sound through the government like I was using it illegally or sneaking it in or something. It has been very painful.
You feel like a criminal or have done the wrong thing. That has been the hardest part in all of this.
The man used the device twice, unaware that by the time he became contagious, the nebulizer was spreading the virus through the hotel. As of Saturday, 14 people, including hotel employees and their direct contacts, have tested positive for Covid-19. Nearly 1,000 people are being monitored for their potential exposure, with tests expected to take place Monday.
There are conflicting claims about why the man, whose identity was not made public, did not consider the threat of nebulizers. He insisted that he had informed the hotel staff that he was in possession of the device and had not been told not to use it. This happened both at the Holiday Inn airport and a hotel in Flinders Lane, where he and his family were relocated after testing positive for Covid-19, the interview said.
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At the latter facility, he said he was told he could still use the nebulizer, provided he gave a warning so that hotel employees could stay out of the rooms for some time afterward. Four hours later, that consent was withdrawn after consultation with health experts, and the man was advised to use an asthma spacer instead.
The CQV chief said there were no records of the man who reported the nebulizer, but added that the man was “not lying.” She encouraged “Media to be respectful, to be nice” when dealing with the story.
Victoria Prime Minister Daniel Andrews said his administration “Clearly communicated” that people should not use such vaporizing medical equipment during a quarantine because he announced the closure.
“Those machines are not allowed, that was clearly communicated, but if you invite me to have a guy with a guy who’s currently on a machine breathing in an IC, I just won’t,” he said.
“The biggest surprise of the whole thing is when the news says ‘you should have known,’ but these people should have told me,” said the asthmatic man. “It is not my responsibility to know that. It’s their responsibility because I’m in their care of health, and they should have understood telling me something like that. “
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