5000 expat Aussies stranded overseas bound for Howard Springs quarantine facility

FIVE thousand Australians currently stranded overseas will arrive in the NT to quarantine at the Howard Springs facility by March, says Prime Minister Scott Morrison

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FIVE thousand Australians currently stranded overseas will arrive in the NT to quarantine at the Howard Springs facility by March, says Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

Mr Morrison said thousands of Aussies would be brought home on a series of repatriation flights run by Qantas from London, South Africa and India over the next five months.

This means the Howard Springs facility will quarantine about 500 repatriated Australians per fortnight on a rolling basis.

Qantas will operate eight return services over the next six weeks, including four from New Delhi, three from London and one from Johannesburg, with additional flights to be announced at a later date.

The first flight is expected to arrive in Darwin from London next Friday followed by a flight shortly after from New Delhi.

Travellers will be charged $2500 per person, and $5000 per family, with all fees being charged and recovered by the Australian Government.

The Prime Minister said additional Australian Medical Assistance Teams (AUSMAT) experts will be in place at Howard Springs to ensure those arrangements are done well.

“There will also be a regular external audit of the infection control practices at Howard Springs and that will be advising directly through to the Chief Medical Officer,” he said.

Security patrols and compliance associated with the repatriations will be managed through existing security arrangements at Howard Springs, led by Northern Territory Police, with assistance from the Australian Federal Police.

It comes as the PM and NT’s Chief Minister Michael Gunner met in Sydney today to formalise arrangements to repatriate people from London, South Africa and India to Australia.

The NT News exclusively revealed online yesterday that eight repatriation flights were expected to fly Aussies home to quarantine in Howard Springs in coming weeks.

The National Critical Care and Trauma Response Centre (NCCTRC) is preparing to scale up the Howard Springs facility to accommodate the new arrivals, including bringing on about 20 additional AUSMAT staff from interstate.

An NT Health worker checking in on a Howard Springs Quarantine Facility resident. Picture: Supplied/ NT Health

NCCTRC executive director Len Notaras said international travellers would be kept separate from others quarantiners in Howard Springs.

“We can certainly handle another 500 [arrivals] at a time to 1,000, and separating them with a very sterile corridor between the existing domestic retrievals and the retrievals that we bring from overseas,” he told ABC Radio.

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