Australian hotel virus cluster grows to eight

The coronavirus outbreak linked to the Holiday Inn quarantine hotel at Melbourne Airport in Australia  has grown to eight, after two more infections were recorded today, ABC News Australia reports.

The new cases include a returned traveler who had completed quarantine on February 7 and a worker.

The other six are a family of three who were infected before entering Victoria, two other hotel workers and one other returned traveller.

Residents at the hotel have been evacuated and more than 100 staff stood down as authorities clean the site and investigate how the three people got infected.

Earlier today, Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton said the "working hypothesis" was that the three cases were linked to the use of a nebuliser by one of the family of three returned travellers who later tested positive to coronavirus.

A nebuliser is a medical device that vaporises medications into a very fine mist that can be inhaled.

"If that's breathed in, especially when it's used as medication, and someone is infectious or later tests positive, then that picks up the virus, and that mist can then be suspended in the air with very, very fine, aerosolised particles," he said at a press conference today.