Australia news live updates: Victoria’s ‘code brown’ to end; WA records second Covid death of pandemic; Morrison ‘misled’ by MPs who crossed floor

Victoria’s Covid-19 quarantine hotels will close within weeks as a purpose-built quarantine centre at Mickleham begins operations, reports AAP.

The state’s quarantine agency Covid-19 Quarantine Victoria (CQV) says medi-hotels to quarantine sick people will cease operations by the end of this month and hotels will not be used at all by the end of March.

More than 70,000 people have undergone quarantine in the hotel system since December 2020, enabling travellers to enter Victoria from interstate and overseas without spreading the coronavirus.

But leaks from the hotels sparked the state’s second wave of coronavirus in 2020, which resulted in more than 18,000 new infections and 800 deaths.

The minister for police, Lisa Neville, said the hotels were built for tourists, not quarantine.

“A purpose-built quarantine facility ensures we have the resources we need to see through the coronavirus pandemic and any pandemics in the future,” she said in a statement.

The new Mickleham facility is the first of its kind in Australia to be built since the start of the pandemic and will open 250 beds later this month, scaling up operations until the end of April.

The site, which will initially have 500 beds, has been built with federal government money but will be operated by state authorities.

It will house unvaccinated arrivals, people who test positive but can’t isolate at home, and could also be used as emergency accommodation for natural disasters such as bushfires.

CQV has begun on-site training and orientation for 500 staff, with hundreds transitioning across from the hotel system.

The program included some of Melbourne’s biggest hotels, including the Mantra Tullamarine, Four Points Hotel, Holiday Inn Airport, Novotel South Wharf and Intercontinental Hotel, Novotel on Collins and the Stamford Plaza.