UK variant of COVID-19 confirmed in Victoria

A Victorian hotel quarantine worker is infected with the highly-infectious UK variant of COVID-19, genomic sequencing has confirmed.

A Victorian hotel quarantine worker is infected with the UK variant of COVID-19, although he is yet to pass it on to others.

Victorian Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton says genomic sequencing confirmed the 26-year-old man contracted the highly-infectious B117 variant, first identified in the UK.

“We’ve always worked on the assumption that it was going to be this variant. That’s because four of the six residents who tested positive at the hotel had that variant identified in them,” he told reporters on Friday.

The 26-year-old man, from Noble Park in Melbourne’s southeast, tested positive to COVID-19 on Wednesday, five days after completing his last shift at the Grand Hyatt Hotel.

The hotel was one of three being used to quarantine Australian Open tennis players, officials and support staff.

Further analysis of the genomics information will be done to determine who the man contracted the virus from, but Professor Sutton stressed there has been no apparent breach in infection prevention and control protocols.

“We really do manage that risk to the fullest extent possible but we need to re-examine it, we need to look at it over and over again,” he said.

Some 14,612 test results were processed in the 24 hours to Friday morning, with a further 8000 tests received since. All have come back negative.

“That is exactly the outcome that we were after, big community response and no new positive cases,” Premier Daniel Andrews said.

Among those to receive a negative result are 16 of the man’s close contacts.

“Those he has spent the most time with during his most infectious period have all, to this point, come back negative,” Mr Andrews said.

“These are good signs that we caught this in good time.”

A final close contact is expected to receive their test result on Friday.

The state’s COVID-19 Testing Commander Jeroen Weimar said a further 743 work contacts have been identified, as have 507 tennis players, officials and support staff.

Tennis Australia boss Craig Tiley said 495 of those had returned negative results, with just 12 still pending after being tested late on Thursday.

“It’s a timing thing,” he told Melbourne radio station 3AW on Friday.

“Hopefully in the next few hours we get the positive outcome that all are negative.”

Melbourne Park lead-up matches will resume on Friday following Thursday’s suspension.

Mr Tiley said the Open would go ahead as planned from next Monday and there has been no change to daily crowd arrangements, initially capped at 25,000 to 30,000.

The man’s case was not picked up as part of the state’s daily testing regime of hotel quarantine staff as he last worked at the hotel on January 29.

Instead, he went to be tested of his own accord after developing symptoms.

Meanwhile, the scare has prompted a number of states and territories to introduce new testing requirements for people travelling from Victoria. -AAP