‘Complete shambles’: A tale of coming home to SA’s quarantine system failure

Every morning a message pops up on Anna Cock’s phone from the SAGOV app: “You are expected to arrive in SA today.” They landed nine days ago.

As far as homecomings go, this isn’t quite what I had in mind. As a family of five, we relocated last week from Tokyo to Adelaide. Of course Covid-19 has changed everything for travellers worldwide but our experience with the South Australian system that is supposed to be managing our quarantine shows it’s a complete shambles.

Essentially we are running our own quarantine show. We’ve marked down the days we need to get Covid-19 tests on the family calendar. The kids are desperate to walk around the corner to visit a playground … a request that we have of course denied. The best entertainment they’ve had since we arrived on November 23 is when the neighbours put up their front lawn Christmas display.

Somehow, through no fault of our own, we slipped through the arrivals process at Adelaide airport when our Qantas flight touched down from Melbourne. We even checked with a police officer before we left the airport if there was anything we should be doing apart from scanning a QR code. “If you’ve come this far you’re free to go,” she smiled, so we were on our way.

Upon arrival at our new rental home in the beachside suburbs, we realised something was amiss. We should have had a PCR test once we stepped off the plane, but that didn’t happen. We had to load the HealthCheck app on our phone, but that didn’t work.

After numerous calls to the Covid hotline, we were instructed to get tested that day – which we did at the local drive-through. What they couldn’t fix were the error codes we received that have prevented us from registering with the HealthCheck app. We were told someone would be in contact. We’re still waiting.

Former Advertiser journalist Anna Cock and her husband David Gibson and children Daisy, 14, Bertie, 5, and Lulu, 11, are doing the right thing and quarantining – despite a bungle with SA Health. Picture: Naomi Jellicoe

THE SYSTEM DOESN’T EVEN THINK WE’VE ARRIVED

Meanwhile, a message pops on our phone each day from sender SAGOV: “You are expected to arrive in SA today.” The message goes on to advise us to click through to another link that doesn’t work.

Separately, we did receive a text from SA Health, five days after we arrived, that acknowledged that the agency was “aware that you have not been able to log in to the HealthCheck SA app”. It continued: “To assist with these technical difficulties, we will be sending a daily SMS to complete your symptom checks. You may also have a compliance officer visit your home.”

So we check a few boxes each day to report that no-one in the family has any Covid-19 symptoms, and eagerly await a visitor who is yet to arrive. We had been counting the sleeps to our December 1 freedom day, but then an email on Tuesday night scuttled all plans.

We were informed we will now need to quarantine for 14 days instead of seven. This has been applied retrospectively to all international arrivals who entered SA from November 23.

When I called the Covid-19 hotline to check, I was told it was “very concerning” that our family has appeared to have slipped through the official net – and that SA Health was grateful for our voluntary co-operation.

I do wonder if there are other people in our situation that are not following the quarantine rules, and are just going about their lives as normal. From our experience, there is little to stop them apart from a moral conscience.

Anna Cock is reunited with her parents Jenny and Leon at Adelaide Airport on November 23. Picture: Naomi Jellicoe

THE OMICRON THREAT

The new, extended quarantine that we’re adhering to has been applied due to the threat of the Omicron variant that emerged since we left Japan on November 19. We have all tested negative four times in the past fortnight: in Tokyo on November 18, Melbourne on November 21, and twice in Adelaide: November 23 and 29.

Everyone in our family who is old enough to get vaccinated has a double dose. We took three flights over five days to get here: Tokyo-Kuala Lumpur, Kuala-Lumpur-Melbourne, and Melbourne-Adelaide. The international flights were empty with just a handful of passengers, but the flight from Melbourne was packed.

It turned out that last flight, QF679, had a Covid-19 case on board, and the people who were seated nearby were classified as casual contacts. We were fortunate to be enough rows away to not be affected.

HEALTHCHECK APP REVIEWS: “ABSOLUTE JOKE”

That situation demonstrates that SA authorities are doing the right thing to take precautionary measures and impose rules that are designed to keep the community safe. But the execution is sorely lacking.

We are not the only ones who haven’t been able to get the HealthCheck app to work. Users have given it a 1.5 star (out of five) rating on the iOS App Store, and the complaints they have posted echo our own. “One of the worst apps and service I’ve had to use,” writes one reviewer who continued: “Extremely stressed that I will be fined even though the issue is on the SA government side.”

Android users are equally scathing. “Useless”, “absolute joke”, “appalling”, “doesn’t work”, “very poor”, “impossible to load”, “total and utter incompetence”, “would give this no stars if given the option“, and “hopeless” are just some of the descriptors on the Google App Store.

We will be sticking to our quarantine requirements, but the additional seven days that’s just been added means two of our children will miss on high school orientation and our five-year-old won’t be able to meet his teacher for next year.

Those hurdles are more of an inconvenience than anything else, and we do recognise we are in a fortunate position to be able to quarantine at home instead of a stuffy hotel room. We have a backyard that means we can enjoy something of the great outdoors.

It’s been a delight to explain what a lawn sprinkler is to our overseas-born progeny – and see their Australian heritage shine through when they immediately threw on their bathers, turned on the tap, and leapt into action.

Many more local discoveries await once we are allowed out, hopefully into a community that hasn’t been let down by a bureaucratic stuff-up that has the potential to pose an infection risk.#

Originally published as ‘Complete shambles’: A tale of coming home to SA’s quarantine system failure