Testing began in earnest on Thursday morning and those affected will remain in isolation until they return a negative test. As a result, Thursdayâs play in the six warm-up tournaments being contested at Melbourne Park was postponed.
Depending on test results, those events should resume on Friday, with a busy day of tennis expected as organisers play catch-up.
âWe know that we have a period now where we have to work with those 507 players and their staff,â Tiley said. âThe probability is very low that thereâll be an issue though.
âWe expect them all to test negative. The plan is to continue to play [in the lead-up events] tomorrow as planned. If we have to go through this again, weâll go through this again. We have thee and a half weeks of tennis to play and weâll go an as scheduled.â
McLaws said complying with best-practice airflow standards would help protect workers from any failures of PPE.
âIf they were non-compliant and pulled their masks down but there werenât aerosols for them to breathe in then they would not get infected,â she said.
She said she was âdisappointedâ security guards in Western Australia were not required to wear masks when more than 1.5 metres away from a guest until this week and eye protection was not mandated until Thursday. WA only began daily testing of quarantine staff last week.
But ultimately, McLaws said, hotels were not hospitals. They were not designed to deal with infection control so the government should invest in purpose-built facilities or options like Howard Springs.