Coronavirus WA: Premier Mark McGowan calls press conference amid hotel quarantine case

Premier Mark McGowan is expected to announce new coronavirus restrictions at his 2.15pm press conference.

Media waiting for the Premier’s press conference to start have been handed face masks by State Government staff with the update due after a man contracted the virus in Perth hotel quarantine and flew to Melbourne.

The Victorian man is the third person to be infected with the highly transmissible UK strain while staying on the sixth floor of the Mercure Hotel Perth.

He flew home to Melbourne on Qantas flight QF778 on Wednesday and returned a positive test result at 2am on Friday.

The WA Government has yet to reveal on what date the man was released from hotel quarantine or how long he was in the community before boarding his flight.

It’s understood health authorities have spent Friday morning attempting to confirm his movements in Perth.

Earlier, Victorian Health Minister Martin Foley said the man was asymptomatic and wore a mask while at Perth and Melbourne airports and on the plane.

Opposition health spokeswoman Libby Mettam said: “As a matter of urgency every effort must be made to ensure there aren’t any other unknown cases of COVID-19 from this hotel quarantine bungle and contact trace this reported new case who has travelled by plane to Victoria.”

A Health Department summary of an independent review of ventilation at Perth’s quarantine hotels, dated April 8, found the Mercure was the most at risk of transmission.

On April 16, WA Chief Health Officer Andy Robertson told Mark McGowan in a letter that the Mercure would be closed as a quarantine hotel.

That was the same day British nurse Alison Rose, who is pregnant and asthmatic, and her four-year-old daughter tested positive for COVID-19 while at the Mercure.

Genomic sequencing showed they contracted the virus from a COVID positive couple who had returned from India and were staying in the room across the corridor on the sixth floor.

On Thursday, Mr McGowan said over the past two weeks 16 people had stayed on the same floor at the Mercure.

They were contacted and told to self-isolate and get re-tested. Two people in rooms directly adjacent have gone back into hotel quarantine.

The ventilation review found rooms at the Mercure had significant positive pressure that caused “leakage” into the corridor. It was one of three hotels identified as “high risk” in a document dated April 8.

The other two were Novotel Langley and Four Points by Sheraton, where a security guard was infected by a guest in an incident that plunged Perth into lockdown.