As it happened: Victoria records two new local cases linked to Holiday Inn cluster; Australia suspends NZ travel bubble

Australia has suspended its quarantine-free travel arrangement with New Zealand following the detection of COVID-19 in a couple and their daughter in Auckland at the weekend.

After initially saying there would be no change to the travel bubble, Australia’s Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly convened an urgent meeting late on Sunday with the chief health officers from NSW, Queensland and Victoria.

“It was decided at this meeting today that all flights originating in New Zealand will be classified as Red Zone flights for an initial period of 72 hours from 12.01am on 15 February”, a statement from the Department of Health reads.

“As a result of this, all people arriving on such flights originating within this three-day period will need to go into 14 days of supervised hotel quarantine.

Staff at the NorthWestern Mental Health service in Epping have been told a co-worker has now tested positive to coronavirus.

It is not yet known if the staff member’s positive result is a new virus case, or if the alert relates to an existing infection in Victoria.

In an email sent to staff, the affected areas where the person worked were identified as the BIPIU and mental health Wards 7 and 8, based at the Northern Hospital in Epping.

The email stated the infected staff member had now been “furloughed and cared for appropriately”, with team members who may need to isolate being identified.

“We have undertaken a number of precautionary steps to ensure the safety of our colleagues and consumers, these steps include identifying team members and consumers who may be impacted, testing impacted individuals and furloughing,” the mental health service said in an email.

The CEO of Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Market says he is seeking urgent detail from the state’s health department, with potentially hundreds of staff, traders and customers at the market on Thursday plunged into 14-day isolation.

A section of the market in Melbourne’s CBD is now considered a tier one exposure site, with anyone present between 8.25am and 10.10am on Thursday required to isolate for 14 days and get tested for the virus.

The market closed as usual at 4pm on Sunday, before the alert from the Department of Health arrived just after 5pm.

Queen Victoria Market’s chief executive officer Stan Liacos said he was made aware late on Sunday afternoon that section two of the market (Sheds A and B), which contain fruit and vegatable traders, had been named as a exposure site.

Ashleigh Dyer was reduced to tears by the latest COVID-19 lockdown, estimating her business, Hemingway’s Wine Room, has lost more than $20,000 from cancelled bookings.

The French-influenced brasserie and wine bar in East Melbourne had been booked out all weekend by couples eager to celebrate Valentine’s Day, but when the lockdown was announced last week Ms Dyer’s hopes were shattered like a romance gone wrong.

“I cried a little bit when the lockdown was announced,” she said.

“I was pretty devastated. We’ve constantly been in this state of mild fear the entire year of, ‘Something else is going to crop up.’ It’s been pretty exhausting.”

The security guard whose positive coronavirus test sent Western Australia into lockdown continues to test positive to the virus and will remain in hotel quarantine beyond 14 days.

Known as case 903, the man in his 20s contracted the UK variant of the virus on January 24 while working at the Four Points hotel in the Perth CBD, health authorities believe.

After returning a positive test on January 30, 903 became the first case of WA community transmission in nearly 10 months.

The man was placed in hotel quarantine and recorded his 14th day in isolation on Saturday.

The federal government is on the verge of striking a deal to bring more Australians home via a quarantine facility in Darwin but the increase in capacity there may not happen until the risk of cyclones ease.

In the meantime, Health Minister Greg Hunt is warning state leaders to acknowledge their “deep, profound human duty” to help Australians return.

International arrivals into NSW and Queensland will double on Monday. NSW will again accept more than 3000 people a week, roughly half the national intake.

But Victoria has halted all arrivals during its present five-day lockdown due to community transmission among quarantine staff, just a week after agreeing they would increase. Premier Daniel Andrews has flagged he wants his state to accept “hundreds” of arrivals each week in the longer term.