The state government has opened a quarantine facility for people infected with COVID-19, spending $9.97 million to take over a boutique hotel in Melbourne’s city centre for the next year.
Brady Hotels will earn an average of more than $27,000 a day so its 146-room hotel in Little Latrobe Street can be used to accommodate those who test positive for the coronavirus but are unable to isolate or recover at home.
The Brady Hotel Central Melbourne, which the state government has turned into a ‘hot’ hotel for COVID infected patientsCredit:Joe Armao
A typical room in the Brady Hotel Central Melbourne was previously listed on travel websites at $109 a night, although rooms can occasionally be rented for as little as $87, one website shows. Averaged out, the Central Melbourne will take in almost $197 a room every night over the year the government has contracted it for.
The Brady Hotel was not part of the controversial returned travellers program, where systematic breakdowns in security and containment measures at two other quarantine hotels have been identified as the source of 99 per cent of all second wave COVID-19 infections. The outbreaks have put Victoria under curfew and caused hundreds of deaths.
The Brady Hotel was opened as a quarantine facility by the Department of Health and Human Services in mid-June only after serious outbreaks were detected at Rydges on Swanston and Stamford Plaza. Those infections have since spread into workplaces and aged care facilities across the state.
The systemic failures are now the subject of an inquiry by former judge Jennifer Coate.
The Brady Hotel is intended to act as a “red” or “hot” hotel, accommodating those who have tested positive and their close contacts, if they want to join them.
The Rydges on Swanston hotel in Carlton, which has been identified as a key source of the current outbreak, had accommodated many positive cases before the Brady Hotel became operational. The Grand Chancellor in Lonsdale Street has also acted as a quarantine hotel.
The contract with Brady Hotels covers accommodation and food for guests, but the cost for medical staff and security being provided by Alfred Health is included under a separate government contract.
The contract was issued to Brady Hotels without an open tender process, which has been a common practice during the state government’s massive COVID-19 emergency spending program.
While those returned travellers who tested positive for coronavirus and stayed in the hotel in June and July were under detention orders and could not leave the hotel, those who are there now are not officially detained and can leave.
This has led to a handful of anti-social behaviour incidents at the hotel, and one person who was COVID-19 positive leaving the hotel and travelling around inner Melbourne without wearing any personal protective equipment.
But there are no confirmed coronavirus cases that have been spread outside the hotel, as happened at the Rydges on Swanston and Stamford Plaza hotels.
While the government has contracted the hotel for a year, it said that if the hotel was not needed beyond the next option to end the agreement – next month – the contract could end.
But the government refused to release that contract, saying details of those options and the financial values were commercial and in confidence.
During the 2009 swine flu outbreak, the government struggled to find hotel operators that were willing to provide quarantine accommodation.
A Department of Health and Human Services spokesman said the government was doing “everything we can to keep Victorians safe, including providing a place for people to isolate to slow the spread of coronavirus”.
Brady Hotels is advertising the hotel as closed “due to Victorian government restrictions”.
Robert Moore, Brady Hotels group general manager, declined to comment on the deal and referred all queries about it to the department.
Dean Long, chief executive of the Accommodation Association, of which Brady Hotels is a member, said that because there were no longer any returning travellers using the hotels commissioned by the state government, “those hotels that are participating are supporting front-line healthcare workers, the Australian Defence Force, or any members of the community who have been impacted”.
“The hotels still have the capacity for returning travellers, but they are primarily accommodating positive cases [of coronavirus],” he said.
“The overwhelming majority of engagement [by hotels] has been successful. These hotels have been an important barrier to COVID-19. Errors were made early on, and they have led to the second wave, but the government is learning from it and we are going from there.”
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