Sydney hotel quarantine: How we can safely cut 14 days to five

As Scott Morrison might put it, we can’t hide under the doona forever. So here’s an idea: Everyone who comes in to Australia still has to go into strict hotel quarantine, but for five days, rather than 14, writes James Morrow.

It’s not every morning that you look through your front door’s peephole to see three uniformed NSW police constables, a doctor, a nurse, and a really, really big guy from the ADF standing on the other side of the threshold.

But then again, it’s not every morning you’re in hotel quarantine.

Fortunately, this delegation had come to give me good news — I’d passed my second COVID test, having already spent 12 days locked up since returning from covering the US election.

Police and Army personnel help direct travellers into mandatory hotel quarantine at the Travelodge Hotel in Darlinghurst. Picture: Tim Hunter

As such, I’d earned a bright yellow wristband which would be my ticket of leave two days later.

I can’t imagine who or what turns up on your door if you test negative, though I imagine it’s like something out of the 1995 thriller Outbreak but without Rene Russo as the plucky scientist to save the day.

Tennis player John Millman and his girlfriend Fi in the Sofitel Wentworth Hotel in quarantine. Picture: Jane Dempster

But what I can say is this: More than six months since Australia set up a hard border, including a mandatory 14-day quarantine, it is time to have another look at the system, and see how we can start to open up again, safely.

The impacts on the economy, ­industry, families, and mental health all say that it’s time to look for a better, more nuanced way to get Australians and travellers alike back again into the country.

Naturally no one wants to threaten NSW’s — or Australia’s — recent good run with the coronavirus.

At the same time we cannot leave tens of thousands of Aussies stranded overseas, families separated, companies unable to bring in the talent they need, and the tourism and education sectors bleeding cash.

As Prime Minister Scott Morrison might put it, we can’t hide under the doona forever.

So here’s an idea: Everyone who comes in to Australia still has to go into strict hotel quarantine, but for five days, rather than 14.

If at the end of the five days they have passed a COVID test and other health screening, they would be free to go home to finish their remaining nine days isolation at home – or, for foreign students, isolate at facilities on their new campuses.

Flight passengers at Sydney airport are escorted to a bus for transportation to mandatory hotel quarantine. SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - NewsWire Photos. November 28, 2020. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Dylan Coker

While slamming the borders shut may have made sense when this all began, there is now a mountain of evidence to suggest we can safely go down a smarter, more humane, and economically viable path.

NSW Health has been testing returned travellers for months — 50,000 since June 30, in fact.

According to a NSW Health spokesman, the quarantine program in this state has picked up 419 positive cases, with 73 of them as a result of that second swab on day 10 of quarantine.

In other words, the vast majority of cases are picked up early on in ­quarantine.

Surely a statistically insignificant number of cases that might develop later could be trusted to self-isolate?

Recall that when Premier Dan Andrews was sending Victoria into its second, crippling lockdown, he blamed the locals for not doing the right thing, claiming that 3000 doorknocks by police and ADF of people who were supposed to be self-isolating revealed more than 800 not at home.

NSW Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant. Picture: Damian Shaw

It later turned out that just 50 were fined for breaching the rules. And many who didn’t answer the door had legitimate excuses, like having been in the shower.

Likewise, with the occasional clusters that have popped up in NSW, community compliance has been by and large phenomenal with people getting tested when asked and staying home and isolating if found to be a contact.

And when cases have emerged, the state’s gold standard contact tracing system — which should be rolled out across the country — has been able to tamp things down quickly, with no need to dial restrictions back up, as happened in Victoria.

Moving to a sort of split quarantine would mean that Australia could ­almost triple the number of people being brought in — clearing the backlog of overseas citizens desperate to come home and throwing a lifeline to education and other industries, safely.