A junior doctor and three nurses caught the virus inside the hospital’s 20-bed Ward 5D and passed it on to others in the community. The outbreaks in March and April involved a total of 23 people – 10 in the first cluster and 13 in the second.

Hundreds of workers at the hospital, one of Queensland’s largest public health facilities, were forced to isolate after being identified as contacts during the outbreaks.

Genomic sequencing linked the clusters to two men who were cared for in the same isolation room inside Ward 5D at different times.

One of two nurses involved in the second outbreak spread the virus to friends and a stripper at a Byron Bay hens’ party while not realising she was infectious.

But a summary of the report’s findings, obtained by InQueensland, had no criticism of the four health workers infected during the clusters, describing them as “conscientious staff doing their jobs”.

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