7 new COVID cases in NSW

Опубликованно 19.08.2020 09:42

Of those, two were from hotel quarantine and five were from community transmission.

Of the five locally acquired cases, NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant said one is a close contact of a previously reported case with no known source, the source of the second, from south west Sydney, is under investigation, the third is a household contact of an existing case.

The fourth is a case from western Sydney with no known source and the fifth is a contact of that case.

Dr Chant revealed fears there were “chains of transmission” spreading through south western and western Sydney which had not yet been detected, after Premier Gladys Berejiklian issued a renewed call for people living in those areas to come forward for testing at the first sign of the smallest symptoms.

On Tuesday, it was revealed a security guard working in hotel quarantine at the Marriott Hotel in Circular Quay had contracted the virus from two women who had returned from the US and were staying in a hotel room on the same floor the guard was working on.

The Premier said it was “a miracle” this kind of transmission had not occurred earlier, and stressed the guard had done nothing wrong in how they acted once becoming infectious.

“The key message here, is no matter what job you have, as soon as you feel any symptom, you should go home and isolate for 14 days and that is what this guard did for 14 days … there’s no indication he ever did the wrong thing.”

7 new cases of #COVID19 were diagnosed in the 24 hours to 8pm last night, bringing the total number of cases in NSW to 3,777. Of the 7 new cases reported:•2 are returned travellers in hotel quarantine – one from overseas and one from Victoria •5 are locally acquired pic.twitter.com/aosmP9t0B5— NSW Health (@NSWHealth) August 19, 2020

The guard worked shifts at Sydney Markets in Flemington and Parramatta Local Court after becoming infected, prompting some to call for those working in quarantine environments to cease taking shifts anywhere else

Ms Berejiklian said there was no merit to the idea, claiming that logic would then forbid them from leaving their homes for any other reason.

The investigation into the guard’s infection is currently focused on points of overlap with two women returned from overseas who were staying in the same hotel room at the Marriott.

Dr Chant said the pair were moved out of the hotel and taken to hospital on August 5.

“The two scenarios we are investigating is points of overlap with those two people, or whether there could be a third case, an intermediate cae, whether the contact could have been with someone else and that person has followed on,” she said.

“We have reviewed CCTV footage at the times of overlap, and there’s no clear answer as to how transmission occurred.”

Testing is available for everyone who worked at the Marriott from July 31 to August 4 at the Maritime Museum.

Dr Chant said health authorities were taking a “wide-ranging view” of how the virus may have spread, but said the diagnosis paled in comparison to the concerning levels of transmission in western and south western Sydney.

“I am equally as concerned, if not more concerned about transmission in south western or western sydney, where we continue to have one or two cases pop up every day where we don‘t have a source.,” she said.

There have been 3,777 COVID cases in NSW since the beginning of the pandemic. There are currently eight patients in ICU, five of whom are ventilated.

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