Professor Bowtell said the federal government needed to step in and fix the hotel quarantine system.
Under the Biosecurity Act 2015, the federal government had the emergency powers to take any necessary measures to prevent and control COVID-19.
But they are letting the country down by not implementing better practices for hotel quarantine, Adjunct Professor Bowtell said.
“You don’t have anyone in control and responsible for quarantine and airports. There needs to be a director of quarantine,” he said.
University of New South Wales epidemiologist and World Health Organisation expert adviser Mary-Louise McLaws said the NSW outbreak was a “tipping point”, with a flawed quarantine system that needs fixing and contact tracers still yet to identify patient zero.
We are at a tipping point and this is quite serious and it has all happened because the quarantine and the entry into the country isn’t quite tight enough,” Professor McLaws said.
The quarantine system for overseas arrivals has failed to consider “the issue of human behaviour”, the COVID-19 expert told the ABC.
“You can’t have a system that requires everybody to do the right thing,” she said.
“They either don’t know what the right thing is if they have arrived, and human nature is often we think we can beat the system and so that needs to be tightened up.”
Professor McLaws said the outbreak could “potentially go on for at least another seven days because seven days is an average incubation period”.
