The couple arrived in Perth from India on April 10 and tested positive for the UK strain a couple of days later. The mother and child from the UK tested positive on April 16,during their day 12 tests.
The Mercure will now become a facility to quarantine seasonal workers from low-risk countries.
Premier Mark McGowan said there were 18 guests isolating on the same floor where the cross-corridor infection occurred who had since completed quarantine.
The cohort had been contacted by health authorities to be re-tested and undertake further quarantine.
“Since the 10th of April,there have been 13 security guards,31 various hotel staff,one doctor,and two CCTV installers,on that floor,” he said.
“All of these people will be retested as soon as possible.”
“You can imagine being locked in a room and not knowing whether you are being infected by the rooms around you.”
Dr Andrew Miller,AMA
Australian Medical Association WA president Andrew Miller said the case showed hotel quarantine was not adequate to prevent airborne transmission.
“This is the opposite of quarantine,this is making somebody sick ... it’s unacceptable ...[the state government] has been negligent,” he said.
“They should be compensating these people not only for their potential physical problems from having caught COVID,but also for the mental anguish that goes along with that.
“They are also putting everybody else who they put into these substandard quarantine facilities in a position of mental anguish because you can imagine being locked in a room and not knowing whether you are being infected by the rooms around you.”
Dr Miller has joined growing calls for Perth’s hotel quarantine to be shifted to open-air facilities such as the Howard Springs Facility in Darwin,which offers mining camp-style accommodation with small decks.
Loading
Burnet Institute epidemiologist Michael Toole told Radio 6PR he also supported a change to the way Australians quarantined.
“We’ve had 14 different quarantine breaches in the past six months,two in Perth,one in Adelaide,two in Melbourne,six in Sydney and three in Brisbane,” he said.
“This is our frontline of defence,probably as important as the vaccination.
“The federal government invested billions in the vaccination program and so we shouldn’t be penny pinching in terms of quarantine,” he said.
In the past six months,Australia has had 14 breaches within its hotel quarantine systems.