Search for a better solution than hotel quarantine

The sight of a quarantine resident being escorted from a central Melbourne hotel wearing a plastic garbage bag over their head is emblematic of the urgent need for a reset. Evacuation of the Holiday Inn on Flinders Lane was necessary because of a malfunction in the building’s fire sprinkler system that damaged four of eight floors on Sunday. Buses were used to ferry residents, some as single occupants, to another hotel. Officials insist the plastic bag was the disrupted resident’s idea. They could have offered a blanket. As these events unfolded, 6.5 million Victorians were still under stage four lockdown because of a handful of COVID-19 cases in the state. Despite there being only two new infections yesterday, both among known contacts, Premier Daniel Andrews was unable to say whether the five-day lockdown would end as scheduled on Wednesday.

The hotel quarantine system was an ad hoc response introduced when knowledge of the COVID-19 virus was rapidly evolving. Using hotels helped to dull the financial impact for hospitality venues starved of paying guests by government restrictions on travel and movement. Things have moved on and there is now debate about whether special-purpose facilities should be built to play a longer-term role. So far this debate has centred on where new facilities should be located, what they should look like and who should take responsibility for running them. With the rollout of a vaccine program about to start, it is reasonable to ask how much longer a quarantine system will be required. Adoption of a vaccination passport and compulsory testing as a prerequisite for travel to Australia may reduce the need for quarantine considerably, but not yet.

As we reported on Tuesday, Australian Border Force data shows more than 253,000 citizens, residents and visa holders have travelled to Australia by air and sea since the hotel quarantine system was set up on March 28. In total, more than 461,000 Australians have returned home since Scott Morrison first urged them to come back on March 13, and 41,000 Australians registered with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade are still waiting to return home from overseas. If ongoing quarantine facilities are required, the best response may be to have purpose-built sites with dedicated staff.

There has been favourable comment regarding the Northern Territory’s Howard Springs facility, where travellers are housed in single rooms with a private ensuite and access to fresh air. All arrivals are given face masks, which must be worn at all times when outside of an allocated room, with physical distancing of 1.5m, except for immediate family groups. There are no cooking facilities but meals are provided each day and residents have access to an online shopping service with Coles, Kmart and Big W. In Victoria, travellers are met at the airport, given a health screening and issued a direction and detention notice before being transferred to a hotel. While in quarantine arrivals must stay in their room and not allow anyone inside. Medical reasons and emergencies are the only exceptions, with heavy fines for transgressions.

Arguments in favour of using city-based hotels for quarantine include proximity to the airport and medical services. It has been claimed that putting facilities in remote locations could increase the risk of wider exposure because of greater travel. This week, private individuals have proposed building facilities near established second-tier airports, including Avalon in Melbourne and Wellcamp airport at Toowoomba near Brisbane. Construction of appropriate quarantine facilities seems to be a sensible goal, particularly if they can provide a greater level of security for the community from the spread of COVID-19 and a higher level of comfort for those put into quarantine. Given that hotels currently being used are privately owned, there is no reason purpose-built centres could not be as well. But there appears to be another agenda by some states to push greater responsibility on to the commonwealth. West Australian Premier Mark McGowan said existing facilities under the control of the commonwealth, such as the Garden Island naval base in Sydney and the immigration detention centres at Northam in WA and Christmas Island, were the logical alternatives to the hotel quarantine systems run by each of the states. Given they fought to retain control, shifting from hotels to new centres should be no reason to absolve state leaders and their health authorities of responsibility to manage the centres and be liable for the quarantine outcomes they deliver. Nor should it be a reason to extend mandatory quarantine schemes for travellers beyond what is necessary.