Coronavirus: New digs for Covid travellers

Overseas travellers arriving in Queensland will be sent to remote workers camps under a plan being considered after the UK variant outbreak.

A quarantine hotel guest from Brisbane’s Grand Chancellor arrives at the Westin Hotel after being evacuated by ambulance on Wednesday. Picture: Tara Croser.

International travellers arriving in Queensland will be sent to remote workers camps under a plan state authorities are considering after an outbreak of the UK strain of COVID-19 in a Brisbane quarantine hotel.

Queensland Health, police and managers of the proposed facilities, some set up to accommodate workers during the development of the state’s liquefied natural gas industry last decade, are meeting Thursday to discuss logistics of the move, which could be rolled out nationally.

Police backed the shift to the camps mid-last year when it was initially proposed — leading to preliminary negotiations with ­facility owners — but the proposal was abandoned with the fall-off in community transmissions.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk on Wednesday called for an overhaul of how international arrivals are quarantined after six people tested positive for the highly infectious COVID-19 variant that has exploded across Europe in the past month.

An ambulance crew transports a quarantined guest from the Grand Chancellor. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Dan Peled

Ms Palaszczuk said she would seek urgent discussions with Scott Morrison and her state and territory counterparts as authorities struggled to determine the cause of the outbreak at the Grand Chancellor Hotel.

The two latest cases in the cluster — a man and his daughter, who arrived from Lebanon on January 1 — prompted an ordered evacuation of the remaining 129 people in quarantine at the hotel and requests for 226 staff and 200 former guests to go into two weeks of self-isolation.

A spokesman for Ms Palaszczuk said he could not comment on options the government was considering before the ­Premier had had discussions with other leaders.

Earlier, Ms Palaszczuk said the highly contagious strain had “really stepped up to that next level” the threat of the virus.

“I think we need to immediately look at the way in which we are handling people coming into the country, international arrivals, and also, too, looking at the quarantine hotels that they are going into,” the Premier said.

“Of course, we have to put in addition precautions and we are doing that immediately, but what we are dealing with here is something that we’ve never had to deal with before.”

Last week, confirmation that a cleaner at the Brisbane hotel had tested for the UK strain — after moving about the community for five days — led to national cabinet ordering the daily testing of ­quarantine hotel workers and a halving in the number of international arrivals into Queensland, NSW and Western Australia.

Police are reinterviewing the cleaner to determine if there was any breach of protocols.

Ms Palaszczuk said authorities were bewildered over how she contracted the virus and flagged the possibility it was spread in the hotel airconditioning.

Queensland Chief Health ­Officer Jeannette Young spoke with her counterparts about the expanding hotel cluster on Wednesday and possible new measures to stem the UK strain.

Several workers’ camp sites are being mooted in southern and central Queensland, which would present significant logistical challenges, including how to move international arrivals in and out of quarantine.

Police are understood to have supported the workers’ camp proposal because it is thought it would be easier to manage and less likely for arrivals to want to escape quarantine.

The disused Howard Springs camp, 25km south of Darwin, has been used by the Northern Territory government to accommodate international arrivals for quarantine.

It is understood camps used to accommodate workers in the ramping up of the LNG sector and new coal mines are being considered.

Ms Palaszczuk will likely need approval from national cabinet if the plan is to go ahead, in relation to changing international flight routes.

Sources said Western Australia would also be well-placed to repurpose remote workers’ camps used across its resource sector.

Former health and finance department chief, Jane Halton, who conducted an inquiry into the nation’s hotel quarantine schemes for the Morrison government, said hotels should be a safe option for quarantining returned travellers.

“The first question is to understand what the pathway to infection was and to make sure health authorities are addressing those issues when operating quarantine arrangements,” Ms Halton said of the Brisbane hotel outbreak.

“I support an increase in testing because there’s an advantage in antigen testing staff daily so if there is any leakage (of the virus) we can find it.

“You don’t want an infected person walking around in the community for five days before it is discovered.”

Additional reporting: Olivia Caisley