International flights to SA restart as Labor questions vaccine numbers
Hundreds of international travellers will arrive in SA this week after a snap travel ban lifted, and a new row has broken out over vaccination numbers.
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More than 200 international arrivals are due to arrive in Adelaide this week after a secret snap travel ban was lifted.
Up to 76 passengers on Singapore Airlines flight SQ277 landed at 2.42pm on Wednesday before being transported by bus to the Grand Chancellor medi-hotel in Hindley St for 14 days quarantine.
More than 140 more people are due to arrive on Thursday on two flights from Singapore and Doha.
International arrivals into SA resumed on Wednesday after a three-day suspension on overseas flights sparked by a surge of ill travellers.
But a Malaysian Airlines flight due on Saturday has been cancelled over concerns about the potential volume of Indian arrivals. India’s coronavirus death toll has soared past 200,000, with thousands of new infections and overloaded hospital wards.
It is the sister flight to one that arrived last weekend from Chennai, in India’s southwest, via Kuala Lumpur.
At least 13 passengers fell ill on that flight of 82 arrivals, half of whom were due to stay in SA and the rest to travel on to WA.
Concerned authorities have increased tests on the passengers who landed hours before the ban was imposed on Saturday night.
SA Health data shows 28 infections in SA over the past week – nine each from India and Pakistan.
There were no cases reported on Wednesday but an old case was removed from SA’s tally.
There are 29 active, or infectious, coronavirus patients at the Tom’s Court medi-hotel and another two are stable in the Royal Adelaide Hospital.
Tom’s Court has 11 rooms free out of 31 for infectious patients.
Adelaide’s five medi-hotels have almost 1000 guests, which is 100 short of capacity.
Health Minister Stephen Wade said the various flight bans would ease capacity pressure.
“If we have a local cluster we also need to have capacity to respond,” he said.
“This is not just about international travel, this is about making sure our … quarantine system, is ready for any eventuality.”
A new vaccine row erupted as SA Health revealed a public AstraZeneca clinic at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital for those older than 50 will open on Monday.
People will be able to schedule their vaccination via the SA Health website in coming days, a spokeswoman said.
SA Health, which has been accused of “hiding” the slow vaccine rollout after changing its public reporting methods, has immunised 55,478 frontline health and medi-hotel staff from 149,640 total state jabs including Commonwealth operations.
But Labor spokesman Chris Picton highlighted data showing SA’s weekly vaccine rollout slowing 39 per cent in two weeks from a seven-day average of 1426 jabs to 876, but which included the Anzac Day weekend.
He criticised the “nation’s slowest” rollout which he claimed was “getting slower”.
But a government spokesman accused Labor of “desperate” metrics. He said the rollout was “well above our share of the national population”.
He said this was “7.38 per cent of all vaccines administered in SA compared to our population share of 6.9 per cent”.
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