A hearing to determine if Victoria’s health department will face trial over alleged hotel quarantine failures is set to begin.
Worksafe charged the Department of Health in September 2021 with 58 breaches of the Occupational Health and Safety Act, after a 15-month investigation.
More than 40 charges allege the department failed to ensure, so far as was reasonably practicable, that persons other than employees were not exposed to health and safety risks arising from the conduct of its undertaking.
Another 17 charges allege the department failed to provide and maintain an environment safe and without risk to the health of its employees.
A committal hearing, where a magistrate will determine if there’s sufficient evidence to support a conviction on the charges, is listed to begin in Melbourne Magistrates Court on Monday.
It’s expected to run for five weeks.
The department was responsible between March and July 2020 for the state’s first hotel quarantine program.
A judicial inquiry into the program found 99 per cent of Victoria’s second wave of COVID-19 cases could be traced back to security guards who became infected at the Rydges on Swanton and Stamford Plaza hotels in May and June 2020.
The second wave resulted in more than 18,000 new infections, 800 deaths and a lockdown that lasted 112 days.
WorkSafe alleges the department breached occupational health and safety laws by failing to appoint people with infection prevention and control expertise at the hotels it was using.
It also alleges the department failed to provide security guards with face-to-face, expert infection prevention control training and written instructions on how to use personal protective equipment.
Department employees, government staff on secondment and security guards, were put at risk of contracting COVID-19 from an infected traveller, colleague or contaminated surfaces, WorkSafe alleges.
If found guilty, the department faces a possible total fine of more than $95 million (US$63.8 million).
