The chief Victoria quarantine official asked that compassion be shown to asthmatics infected with the corona, which was believed to be the source of an outbreak at a Holiday Inn hotel that led to a strict five-day blockade in the Australian state.
“Nobody ever wanted this to happen and I’m sorry that it happened the way it is,” Emma Cassar, commissioner for Covid-19 Quarantine Victoria (CQV), said on Saturday. “It’s awful. We never accused him of doing the wrong thing, he didn’t do the wrong thing.”
She was referring to a 38-year-old man from Victoria who was being held largely responsible for an outbreak of the highly contagious ‘British’ strain of Covid-19 last week. State officials announced a surprise blockade of the level four ‘breaker’ on Friday in an attempt to prevent the virus from circulating among the general public. The request for a five-day stay was met with complaints from anti-block activists and triggered the purchase of essential products like toilet paper by panic.
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The man, who is currently being cared for in an intensive care unit, said he was vilified for inadvertently causing 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 turns a medicine into a fine mist that can be inhaled by a patient and that he used to treat his asthma.
“If they told me that I couldn’t use it, I never would have used it”, he told The Age. “The way it all came out in the news and through the government made it look like I was using it illegally or that I hid it or something. It has been very distressing.
You feel like a criminal or you did the wrong thing. That was the most difficult thing in all of this.
The man used the device twice, unaware that, at the time he was infected, the nebulizer was spreading the virus throughout the hotel. As of Saturday, 14 people, including hotel staff and their direct contacts, tested positive for the Covid-19 test. Nearly 1,000 people are being monitored for possible exposure, with tests scheduled to take place on Monday.
There are conflicting claims about why the threat posed by nebulizers was not taken into account by the man, whose identity has not been released. He insisted that he informed hotel staff that he was in possession of the device and was not instructed not to use it. This happened both at the Holiday Inn airport and at a hotel on Flinders Lane, where he and his family moved after a positive test for Covid-19, according to the interview.
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At the last facility, he said he was told he could still use the nebulizer, as long as he told the hotel staff to stay out of the rooms for a while. Four hours later, this permission was revoked after consultation with health experts and the man was advised to use an asthma spacer.
The CQV chief said there were no records of the man declaring the nebulizer, but added that the man was “I’m not lying.” She encouraged “Means of communication to be respectful, to be kind” when covering the story.
Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews said his government “Clearly communicated” that people should not use such medical vaporization equipment during a quarantine when he was announcing the blockade.
“These machines are not allowed, that was clearly communicated, but if you’re inviting me to beat up a guy who’s on a machine to breathe at the moment in an ICU, I’m just not doing it,” he said.
“The biggest surprise of all is when the news is saying ‘you should know’, but these people should have told me.” said the asthmatic. “It is not my responsibility to know that. It is their responsibility because I am in their health care, and they should have understood that they have to tell me something like that. “
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