Getting people home from interstate or overseas is part of a national and international humanitarian effort with airlines needing to 'step up', says Western Australia Health Minister Roger Cook.
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Mr Cook said underwriting flights were something each of the state governments were looking at and working together on to find a solution.
He said police commissioners and their teams were currently finding out how many people were in each domestic city and how to best get them home.
Mr Cook said there were hundreds of West Australians in the eastern states wanting to get back to the state, while there were more than 600 people from the eastern states currently in WA needing to get back home.
“It's a big operation,” he said. “The State Health Incident Control Centre and ... police commissioner continue to work with airlines to try and work out the best way to get these people home.
“These people have done 14 days of isolation, they want to get home, we want to get them home to their families and their friends.
“We need the airlines to help us with this, we need the airlines to step up and to make their assets available so that we can get these people home.”
Mr Cook said the process was complicated with the issue spanning across the world, with cruise ships caught up in the problem.
“There’s obviously Western Australians and Australians overseas on cruise ships trying to get home as well,” he said.
“So, to a certain extent this is part of an international effort and an humanitarian international effort.”
Mr Cook said in the case of foreign cruise ship passengers and crew members in WA hospitals and hotels, the state was simply supporting the commonwealth government in the view that it was a global effort to support each other.