Covid-19 appears to have jumped between neighbouring rooms in hotel quarantine in Sydney after seven cases of people arriving from different countries were revealed to have the same viral sequence.
NSW Health said today that it had been notified on Friday that the returned travellers had the same viral sequence.
The cases may have to be reclassified as locally acquired.
The seven cases came from two family groups who arrived from different countries on different days. They stayed in adjacent rooms on the 12th floor of the Adina Apartments Hotel at Sydney’s Town Hall.
Staff who worked on the floor when the original case was believed to have been infectious – between 8 and 11 April – are self-isolating.
NSW Health said all security staff who worked on the 12th floor at the time had had at least one vaccination.
Other people in quarantine on the 12th floor at the time have all been retested and returned negative results.
NSW vaccinated 4018 people in the 24 hours to 8pm on Friday, bringing the state total to 173,302. Seven new cases were recorded in hotel quarantine from 8763 tests.
This content first appear on the guardian