Victorian woman slams Daniel Andrews over bungled hotel quarantine in TV advertisement

A woman who lost her grandfather to Covid has blamed the death on Daniel Andrews and his bungled hotel quarantine program in a moving TV advertisement. 

Gina Haitidis unloaded on the Victorian premier in the short 30-second video attacking his handling of the pandemic in 2020.

‘We haven’t forgotten. You caused the second lockdown,’ she said. 

‘You let the virus out of your hotels, which killed 801 people, including my grandfather.’

The state’s second lockdown was triggered after the government’s quarantine hotels failed to contain Covid infections. 

‘You let the virus out of your hotels, which killed 801 people, including my grandfather,’ Ms Haitidis said of Victorian premier Daniel Andrews

The Coate inquiry later found poor health controls were in place at the hotels and the program was responsible for hundreds of deaths and 18,000 infections. 

The inquiry heard evidence that 90 per cent of infections recorded between May and December in 2020 could be linked back to an outbreak at Rydges.

Ms Haitidis criticised the draconian lockdown with police enforcing the stay-at-home orders, residents confined to a five kilometre travel radius and playgrounds closed.

‘Then you let the police treat us like criminals,’ she said. ‘And you robbed our kids of schools and of playgrounds.’ 

Ms Haitidis later told Herald Sun her grandfather had died in hospital on August 15.

The loss was made more devastating with police ensuring no more than 10 people attended the funeral – one of the restrictions at the time.

‘Hotel quarantine was something that obviously went drastically wrong,’ she said.

‘But when the inquiry was to happen, that’s when we got our hopes up … (we thought) now we’re going to finally get some sort of answers to what’s going on.

‘There’s consequences of those decisions and my family is one of those consequences.’ 

The advertisement comes as a class action against the Victorian government over its disastrous hotel quarantine program is given the green light. 

The inquiry heard evidence that 90 per cent of infections recorded between May and December in 2020 could be linked back to an outbreak at Rydges

Ms Haitidis criticised the draconian lockdown with police enforcing the stay-at-home orders, residents confined to a five kilometre travel radius and playgrounds closed

Last Friday, Justice John Dixon dismissed the State of Victoria’s application to dismiss the suit.

Lawyer Damian Scattini from Quinn Emanuel, who is leading the class action, said the ruling was an important win for business owners.

‘When the Victorian government decided to run a mandatory hotel quarantine program, it took on a duty to ensure it was managed properly,’ Mr Scattini said.

‘If the hotel quarantine program had been handled competently by the people in charge, there would not have been a second lockdown.

‘That lockdown decimated businesses and, through this class action, we are giving business owners a way to get back some of what they lost.’

He added: ‘The class action relates to tens of thousands of businesses that provided goods or services to the public from bricks and mortar premises in Victoria and suffered financial loss because of Victoria’s second lockdown.’