Woman in hotel quarantine forced to watch dad die on video call

A woman was forced to watch her father die on a video call because South Australia’s controversial travel ban denied her access until he was dead.

A woman was forced to watch her father die on a Wi-Fi video call because South Australia’s controversial travel ban denied her access to him until he was dead.

The Adelaide woman, who had been living in Canada, has slammed SA Health for not allowing her the opportunity to bid her dad goodbye, Channel 7 reported.

Amanda Bilopavlovic spent $11,000 on a one-way business class ticket from Canada to Sydney in a desperate mercy dash home after learning of her father’s terminal diagnosis.

When she arrived on August 20, she went straight into two-week quarantine and made countless calls to SA Health.

Desperate for an exemption to cross the border into South Australia, she kept her hopes up with officials promising her an answer.

“I was told I’d hear in a few hours, I was told I would hear in four days. Just everybody told me a different story,” she told Channel 7.

Amanda was only allowed to see her father’s body after he had died. Picture: 7 News

She watched her father take his last breath over a video call. Picture: 7 News

With her father’s condition rapidly deteriorating she finally flew to Adelaide last Friday.

But without the paperwork she was kept at Adelaide Airport for four hours before being taken to the Pullman, a dedicated quarantine or “medi-hotel”, for another two weeks in isolation.

“So much for compassionate travel because it hasn’t been very compassionate at all,” she said.

Despite being fully vaccinated, Ms Bilopavlovic was told she wouldn’t be granted a sterile corridor to see her dying father until she cleared another Covid-19 test.

The test was taken at 3pm, but by 3.30pm her father was gone.

“I managed to hook up onto the Wi-Fi and yeah I saw him take his last breath, he was still breathing but I think he was waiting to hear from me … that was it,” she said.

“I was just praying that he would hold on.”

Amanda Bilopavlovic’s father died on Friday.

She has slammed South Australia’s travel bans.

Her test came back Covid-negative two hours later and she was allowed to briefly see his body.

She’ll spend the next 12 days in her medi-hotel room, grieving her father alone.

In a statement to Channel 7, SA Health said “significant delays in processing travel exemptions” had been cause by the “high volume of applications it receives for travel exemptions”.

SA Health said its “thoughts are with Ms Bilopavlovic and her family during this difficult time”.

South Australia recorded one new Covid case on Monday, a woman in her 20s who caught the virus overseas and is already in a medi-hotel.