Welfare checks entrusted to travel agents in hotel quarantine

Welfare checks inside Victoria’s botched hotel quarantine program were being conducted by travel agents over the phone, an inquiry has heard.

HelloWorld Travel was contracted by the health department to make calls to returned travellers in quarantine, with two welfare checks to be carried out over the 14-day period.

The travel agents made the calls from a call centre with a pre-approved script to check in on the welfare of guests.

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Helloworld Travel was contracted to carry out welfare checks via telephone on people in quarantine in Melbourne.

But the calls often hit a bottleneck when they had to go through the hotel switchboard.

“It’s good design but the phone call has to go through reception desk and there’s another blockage,” Safer Care Victoria CEO Euan Wallace said.

“We want as few people as possible in the hotel because you increase risks of transmission.”

The Hotel Quarantine Inquiry was also told of a suspected suicide at the Pan Pacific hotel in April.

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An inquiry has heard further details about Melbourne’s quarantine system.

Five unanswered calls were made before a body was discovered.

“The nursing team had spoken to him in the afternoon of the day before,” Professor Wallace said.

“And they had tried to call in the morning … but he didn’t pick up in the morning.”

Premier Daniel Andrews today reaffirmed the hotel quarantine program would be coming back to Victoria but only after the second wave has been contained.

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Melbourne will re-establish hotel quarantine once the second outbreak has ended.

“Once we get to that point there be a time when we can resume flights coming back here and there’ll need to be a quarantine arrangement,” he said.

And despite its chequered history in the second wave, the Rydges on Swanston hotel today sold for a rumoured $35 million.

Video: Quarantining hotel security could have limited COVID-19 second wave in Victoria (Sky News Australia)